GIFT,.  OF 
MICHAEL  REESE 


- . 


JOHN    MILTON 

A  SHORT  STUDY  OF  HIS  LIFE  AND  WORKS 


JOHN   MILTON 


A   SHORT   STUDY   OF    HIS   LIFE 
AND   WORKS 


BY 


WILLIAM   P.   TRENT 

AUTHOR  OF  "WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS,"  "SOUTHERN 

STATESMEN   OF   THE  OLD   REGIME," 

"  ROBERT  E.   LEE,"  ETC. 


gen* 
THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:   MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
l899 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1899, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  -  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


TO 

RICHARD   GARNETT,  LL.D. 

©f  tfje  33rtttgfj  Jflusttum 

WHO  TO   HIS   WELL-DESERVED   FAME  AS  POET,   SCHOLAR 

AND    CRITIC 
AND  TO   HIS   POWER  AND    CHARM   AS  A  FULL  MAN 

ADDS  THE  DISTINCTION   OF  BEING 
A  LOVER  AND   JUDICIOUS    BIOGRAPHER   OF  MILTON 

^Tijts  3littlc  Uolume  is  fecrifrelf 

IN   FRIENDSHIP  AND   GRATITUDE 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  is  a  result  of  a  conviction  forced 
upon  me  by  an  experience  of  many  years  as  a 
teacher  of  literature,  that  we  Anglo-Saxons  do 
not  honor  Milton  as  we  should  do,  that  we  too 
frequently  misunderstand  him  and  neglect  him. 
He  is  rapidly  passing  —  if,  indeed,  he  has  not 
already  passed  —  into  the  class  of  authors  whom 
we  talk  about  oftener  than  we  read.  In  view 
of  this  fact  I  have  here  ventured  to  tell  over 
again  the  story  of  his  life  and  achievements 
in  the  hope  that  I  may  win  him  more  lovers 
and  readers. 

It  may,  of  course,  be  deemed  a  presumptuous 
undertaking,  for  there  is  nothing  new  to  say 
after  Professor  Masson's  herculean  labors,  of 
which  I  have  taken  full  advantage,  and  Mark 
Pattison  and  Dr.  Garnett  have  covered  the  field 
admirably  in  their  smaller  volumes.  But  I  have 
thought  that  the  new  book  always  has  an  ad- 

vii 


Vlil  PREFACE 

vantage  as  a  literary  missioner,  if  I  may  use  the 
phrase,  through  the  very  fact  of  its  novelty,  and 
I  have  also  hoped  that  a  somewhat  unusual 
grouping  and  proportioning  of  the  most  impor- 
tant biographical  and  critical  materials  might 
arrest  the  attention  of  at  least  a  few  of  the 
many  souls  to  whom  Milton  has  become  a  name 
and  nothing  more.  But  perhaps  I  have  trusted 
rather  to  the  naturally  contagious  effects  of 
an  enthusiastic  treatment  of  a  poet  who  has 
inspired  me  with  reverence  since  my  earliest 
years.  If  this  hope  fail  me,  I  shall  at  least 
not  repent  of  having  paid  a  vain  tribute  to  his 
memory,  for  popular  neglect  can  never  really 
dim  the  lustre  of  Milton's  fame,  nor  can  an 
injudicious  panegyric  hurt  it,  and  it  is  always 
a  spiritual  advantage  to  a  man  to  give  utterance 
to  a  love  and  enthusiasm  for  a  sublime  char- 
acter that  have  grown  with  his  growth  and 
strengthened  with  his  strength. 

W.  P.  TRENT. 
SEWANEE,  TENN., 
January  9,  1899. 

Hearty  thanks  are  hereby  given  to  Messrs. 
Longmans,  Green,  and  Company  for  their  kind 


PREFACE  ix 

permission  to  use  in  Chapters  III.,  IV.,  and  V. 
of  Part  II.  considerable  matter  first  employed 
in  my  edition  of  "  L'Allegro  "  and  other  poems 
in  their  "English  Classics,"  edited  by  my  friend, 
Professor  George  R.  Carpenter,  whose  consent 
has  also  been  granted.  Much  of  the  matter  in 
Chapters  VIII.  and  IX.  of  Part  II.  will  be 
found  in  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Review  for 
April  and  May,  1899;  while  the  first  part  is 
expanded  from  an  article  published  in  the 
Sewanee  Review  for  January,  1897. 


\ — 


CONTENTS 

PART   I. —  LIFE 
CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

EARLY  YEARS  (1608-1639) i 

CHAPTER   II 
THE  MAN  OF  AFFAIRS  (1640-1660)        .        .        .18 

CHAPTER   III 
THE  SUPREME  POET  (1661-1674)  ....      46 

PART   II.  —  WORKS 

CHAPTER  I 
EARLIEST  POEMS  IN  ENGLISH  59 

CHAPTER  II 
THE  LATIN  POEMS 71 

CHAPTER   III 

"  L'ALLEGRO  "  AND  "  IL  PENSEROSO  "     .        .        -79 
xi 


Xll  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   IV 

PAGE 

"  ARCADES  "  AND  "  COMUS  "   .        .        .        .        .96 

CHAPTER  V 
THE  ELEGIAC  POEMS 119 

CHAPTER  VI 
THE  PROSE  WORKS 155 

CHAPTER  VII 
THE  SONNETS 184 

i  CHAPTER  VIII 

"PARADISE  LOST" 193 

CHAPTER  IX 
"  PARADISE  REGAINED  "  AND  "  SAMSON  AGONISTES"    234 

CHAPTER  X 
MILTON'S  ART        .        .        .        .  .        .    249 

INDEX 279 


OF  THB 

UNIVERSITY 


JOHN    MILTON 

a  Sfjort  Stairs  of  |)ts  life  anti  SHorfts 

PART   I.  — LIFE 
CHAPTER  I 

EARLY   YEARS   (1608-1639) 

THE  fact  that  Milton  was  born  in  London  on 
December  9,  1608,  counts  for  not  a  little  in  his 
career.  He  was  born  early  enough  to  catch 
much  of  the  power  and  inspiration  of  the  age 
of  Elizabeth,  but  not  early  enough  to  catch  its 
spirit  of  universal  open-mindedness  and  free- 
heartedness.  Thus  it  happens  that  some  of  the 
finest  qualities  of  Shakspere,  who  epitomized 
the  Elizabethans,  are  found  in  Milton  in  a  state 
of  arrested  development,  —  for  example,  genial 
humor  and,  in  a  less  degree,  human  sympathy.* 
Had  Milton  been  born  twenty  years  earlier, 
it  is  possible  that  he  might  have  surpassed 
Shakspere  in  totality  of  accomplishment,  just 


2  JOHN   MILTON 

as  the  latter  surpassed  Marlowe ;  for  in  point 
of  grandeur,  both  of  work  and  of  character, 
the  advantage  seems  to  lie  with  Milton.  Had 
his  connections  been  even  more  entirely  with 
the  country  instead  of  with  the  capital,  the 
centre  of  political  and  religious  activity,  he 
might  have  lived  his  life  under  the  spell  of 
the  Elizabethans,  and  left  behind  him  poetical 
works  more  serenely,  less  strenuously  artistic, 
than  those  we  now  possess,  but  also  of  wider 
range  in  point  of  underlying  qualities.  Yet 
these  are  might-have-beens,  and  some  of  us 
would  not  have  Milton  other  than  he  is,  —  the 
greatest  artist,  man  of  letters,  and  ideal  patriot, 
as  we  think,  that  the  world  has  ever  known. 
There  are,  however,  certain  points  about  his 
early  career  which  are  not  at  all  hypothetical, 
and  deserve  careful  though  not,  in  this  con- 
nection, minutely  detailed  attention. 

He  was  the  third  child  and  namesake  of 
a  prosperous  scrivener,  of  respectable  family, 
whose  puritanical  leanings  did  not  prevent  him 
from  conforming  to  the  Established  Church, 
from,  cultivating,  with  some  success,  the  art 
of  music,  and  from  giving  his  children  a  broad 


LIFE  3 

education  and  a  pleasant,  happy  home.     From  .  j 
this  father  Milton  probably  inherited  much  of  1 1 
his  genius,  —  a  genius  fostered  by  the  wisdom 
and  liberality  of  the  parent  to  an  extent  that 
can  scarcely  be  paralleled  in  our  literary  annals, 
save   in    the    cases    of    Robert    Browning   and 
John  Stuart  Mill.     That  the  youth  was  grateful 
is   evidenced    by   his    fine   Latin   verses,    "  Ad 
Patrem,"  especially  by  the  lines:  — 

"  Hoc  utcumque  tibi  gratum,  pater  optima,  carmen 
Exiguum  meditatur  opus  ;  nee  novimus  ipsi 
Aptius  a  nobis  quae  possint  munera  donis 
Respondere  tuis,  quamvis  nee  maxima  possint 
Respondere  tuis,  nedum  ut  par  gratia  donis 
Esse  queat  vacuis  quae  redditur  arida  verbis."  l 

To  his  mother  also,  whose  maiden  name, 
Sarah  Jeffrey,  has  been  only  recently  ascer- 
tained, he  owed  not  a  little  as  every  good  man 
does,  as  well  as  to  his  early  tutors  with  whom 

1  Thus  rendered  by  Cowper  :  — 

"  For  thee,  my  Father !  howsoe'er  it  please, 
She  frames  this  slender  work,  nor  know  I  aught 
That  may  thy  gifts  more  suitably  requite; 
Though  to  requite  them  suitably  would  ask 
Returns  much  nobler,  and  surpassing  far 
The  meagre  stores  of  verbal  gratitude." 


4  JOHN  MILTON 

he  seems  to  have  been  on  especially  affectionate 
terms.  One  of  these,  Thomas  Young,  is  still 
remembered  by  scholars  as  a  Presbyterian  con- 
troversialist of  note,  but  his  surest  title  to  fame 
is  found  in  these  four  lines  of  his  pupil's :  — 

"  Primus  ego  Aonios  illo  praeeunte  recessus 
Lustrabam,  et  bifidi  sacra  vireta  jugi, 
Pieriosque  hausi  latices,  Clioque  favente 
Castalio  sparsi  laeta  ter  ora  mero." x 

Thus  we  see  that  the  boy  was  grateful  to  his 
father  and  his  teachers,  and  we  have  his  sub- 
sequent testimony  that  he  was  so  much  in  love 
with  learning  that  from  the  early  age  of  twelve 
he  scarcely  ever  quit  his  lessons  before  mid- 
night.2 Yet  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  then 
or  afterward  he  was  anything  of  a  prig,  and 
it  is  clear  that  he  must  have  enjoyed  and  prof- 
ited from  his  intercourse  with  the  noted  musi- 

1  Thus  rendered  by  Cowper :  — 

"  First  led  by  him  through  sweet  Aonian  shade, 
Each  sacred  haunt  of  Pindus  I  survey'd ; 
And  favored  by  the  muse,  whom  I  implored, 
Thrice  on  my  lip  the  hallow'd  stream  I  pour'd." 

2  See  the   long  and   fine  autobiographical    passage    in   the 
"  Second  Defence  "  — the  source  of  much  of  our  best  informa- 
tion about  Milton. 


LIFE  5 

cians  that  frequented  his  father's  house.  The 
phrase  so  loosely  used  by  us,  a  liberal  education, 
applies  in  full  force  to  Milton  —  his  was  the 
education  given  by  good  training,  by  contact 
with  ripe  minds  and  with  sound  learning,  and 
by  practice  in  the  liberalizing  art  of  music. 
Nor  was  that  finer  element  of  a  well-spent 
youth,  friendship  with  a  companion  of  the  same 
age  and  sex,  lacking  to  him.  His  intimacy 
with  Charles  Diodati,  the  son  of  an  Italian 
physician  settled  in  London  for  religious  rea- 
sons, left  its  mark,  we  cannot  doubt,  on  Milton's 
character  as  well  as  upon  his  Latin  verses. 
Diodati's  devotion  has  been  repaid  by  the 
"  Epitaphium  Damonis,"  but  Milton's  has  not 
been  sufficiently  remembered  by  those  who 
insist  that  he  was  practically  devoid  of  the 
intimate  human  sympathies.  No  man  destitute 
of  such  sympathies  could  have  written  such 
poetry  as  Milton's,  but  it  is  fair  to  say  that 
the  direct  influence  of  his  fellows  counted 
for  less  with  him  than  with  any  other  great 
world  poet.  Yet  he  is  also  the  sublimest, 
though  not  the  most  universal  of  the  poets,  and 
perhaps  in  his  case  and  always,  sublime  eleva- 


6  JOHN   MILTON 

tion  is  obtained  only  through  isolation.  Be  this 
as  it  may,  the  indirect  influence  of  men  through 
their  books  counted  for  more  with  Milton  than 
can  be  estimated  in  words.  From  his  earliest 
youth  he  was  not  merely  an  earnest  student 
but  an  unsatiated  reader,  and  to  this  day  he 
stands  as  our  most  learned  poet  and  cultured 
artist,  Ben  Jonson  not  excepted. 

About  1620  Milton  entered  St.  Paul's  School 
as  a  day-scholar  and  remained  there  until  1625, 
when  he  commenced  residence,  during  the 
Easter  term,  at  Christ's  College,  Cambridge. 
At  school  he  profited  from  the  acquirements, 
both  in  the  classics  and  in  the  vernacular,  of 
the  head-master  Dr.  Alexander  Gill,  and  some- 
what from  the  friendship  of  the  latter's  able 
but  rather  graceless  son,  namesake,  and  assist- 
ant. Here,  too,  he  formed  his  friendship  with 
Diodati  and  began  his  apprenticeship  as  a  poet 
by  paraphrases  of  Psalms  cxiv.  and  cxxxvi.  — 
exercises  which,  if  reminiscential  of  the  work 
of  other  poets,  nevertheless  deserve  the  praise 
of  Dr.  Garnett  as  being  in  general  tone  both 
"  masculine  and  emphatic." 

Why  his  father  should   have  selected  Cam- 


LIFE  7 

bridge  for  him  is  uncertain,  but  it  is  quite  clear 
that  although  Milton  continued  his  university 
studies  for  seven  years,  taking  his  B.A.  in  1629 
and  his  M.A.  in  1632,  he  did  not  enter  into  the 
spirit  of  the  place.  He  tells  us  in  one  of  his  con- 
troversial tracts  that  he  " never  greatly  admired" 
it  in  his  youth,  and  one  of  his  Latin  academical 
exercises  lets  us  see  that  he  probably  indulged 
in  strictures  on  the  methods  of  instruction. 
From  the  elaborate  account  of  the  Cambridge 
of  the  time  put  together  by  Professor  Masson 
one  is  inclined  to  infer  that  the  studious  and 
well-trained  undergraduate  had  reason  for  his 
criticisms.  There  were  able  men  among  the 
instructors,  but  none  capable  of  arousing  the 
enthusiasm  of  a  self-contained  youth  like  Mil- 
ton ;  and  although  the  poet  John  Cleveland,  and 
Henry  More,  the  Platonist,  were  members  of 
his  college,  they  were  his  juniors  in  age  and 
•standing.  Yet  we  have  Milton's  word  for  it 
that  the  fellows  of  Christ's  treated  him  with 
"  more  than  ordinary  respect,"  and  we  know 

"  '; 

that  he  was  several  times  accorded  the  honor 
of  selection  as  a  public  speaker.  As  for  the 
story  that  he  was  actually  whipped  by  his  un- 


8  JOHN   MILTON 

sympathetic  tutor,  William  Chappell,  a  tool  of 
Laud's,  we  may  dismiss  it  as  an  idle  tale,  or 
else  as  a  distorted  version  of  a  personal  en- 
counter between  pupil  and  instructor.  Never- 
theless the  fact  remains  clear  that  Milton  heads 
the  list  of  great  English  men  of  letters  who 
have  been  out  of  sympathy  with  their  universi- 
ties—  a  list  that  includes  Dryden  and  Gibbon 
and  Shelley  and  Byron. 

Yet  during  these  college  years  he  was  lay- 
ing the  broad  foundations  of  his  character 
and  his  culture.  The  personal  purity  pre- 
served through  all  temptation  and  ridicule  (his 
fellow-students  dubbed  him  "Lady"  as  much 
on  this  account,  we  cannot  doubt,  as  because 
of  his  conspicuous  beauty  of  face  and  figure), 
enabled  him  to  expound  as  no  other  poet  has 

ever  done 

"the  sage 

And  serious  doctrine  of  Virginity ;  " 
* — 
the    self-absorption    in    the    pursuit    of     high 

ideals,  the  proud  aloofness  from  common 
things  and  common  men  that  characterized 
him,  may  have  lessened  his  human  sympa- 
thies, but  assuredly  made  possible  that  su- 


LIFE  9 

premely  ideal  love  of  religion  and  his  native 
land  that  prompted  and  accomplished  as  noble 
a  deed  of  patriotic  self-sacrifice  as  has  yet 
been  recorded  to  the  credit  of  the  race/T~a~rfd 
finally  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  he  would  ever 
have  become  master  of  so  profound  and  exact 
an  erudition  and  so  serene  and  balanced  a 
culture,  had  he  not  profited  by  that  systematic 
training  and  discipline  of  the  faculties  which 
is  imparted  in  full  measure  by  a  historic  uni- 
versity alone.  It  should  be  remembered  fur- 
thermore that  during  his  university  career  he 
found  time  and  inspiration  to  write  much  of 
his  Latin  verse,  as  well  as  such  great  English 
poems  as  the  ode  "  On  the  Morning  of  Christ's 
Nativity,"  the  epitaph  "On  Shakspere,"  and 
the  sonnet  "  On  his  being  arrived  at  the  age 
of  twenty-three."  This  was  no  slight  achieve- 
ment in  verse,  especially  if  we  add  two  serious 
and  good  elegies,  two  humorous  ones,  two  frag- 
ments, and  perhaps  the  exquisite  "  Song  on 
May  Morning";  but  more  important  was  the 
formation  of  the  resolution  to  which  he  ever 
afterward  adhered  —  to  order  his  life 
"  As  ever  in  his  great  Task-Master's  eye.1' 


10  JOHN   MILTON 

When  he  left  Cambridge  he  betook  himself 
to  his  father's  halfway  suburban  residence 
at  H'orton,  in  Buckinghamshire.  Although  he 
had  criticised  the  administration  of  the  univer- 
sity, he  seems  to  have  been  pressed  to  take 
a  fellowship,  but  that  would  have  meant  prac- 
tically taking  orders ;  and  while  such  had  once 
been  his  intention,  he  felt  now  that  he  could 
not  conscientiously  pursue  the  latter  course. 
The  church  service  could  not  have  been  very 
irksome  to  him,  for  he  had  borne  it  daily  for 
seven  years  ;  nor  could  theological  difficulties 
have  beset  him  greatly,  for  he  subscribed  the 
Articles  on  taking  his  degree,  and  his  Arian 
proclivities  were  a  matter  of  later  years.  It 
was  at  the  ecclesiastical  organization  then  con- 
trolled by  Laud,  who  was  fostering  to  the  best 
of  his  abilities  and  in  a  peculiarly  exasperating 
way  the  high-church  reaction,  that  the  Puritan 
idealist  looked  askance.  He  would  not  "  sub- 
scribe slave  "  even  though  he  were  conscious 
that  with  his  scholarly  tastes  he  would  find  it 
hard  to  discover  a  better  profession.  He  pre- 
ferred to  be  "  church-outed  by  the  prelates" 
and  was  nobly  serious  if  also  somewhat  stiff- 


LIFE  1 1 

necked  about  it.  Had  he  continued  at  Cam- 
bridge he  would  assuredly  have  been  the 
centre  of  many  an  academic  dispute ;  it  is  im- 
possible to  say  what  would  have  happened 
had  he  entered  the  Church  in  any  active  way 
and  been  brought  into  personal  contact  with 
Laud.  He  would  have  gone  down1  tempo- 
rarily before  bigotry  in  power ;  but  the  genius 
even  of  a  Boswell  would  have  failed  to  do 
justice  to  an  encounter  that  would  have  re- 
quired a  Shakspere. 

If  Milton  read  his  own  character  as  we  now 
do,  and  restrained  his  ardent  nature  that  he 
might  allow  his  powers  to  ripen  through  soli- 
tude and  study,  he  more  than  deserves  the 
epithets  he  bestowed  upon  his  favorite  Spen- 
ser—  "sage  and  serious."  If  he  did  not  fully 
understand  himself,  but  simply  felt  conscious 
of  high  powers  and  a  mission  to  fulfil,  he  de- 
serves all  the  praise  that  belongs  so  amply 
to  those  "  who  only  stand  and  wait."  But 
much  praise  is  due  to  the  father  also  who, 
now  that  his  active  life  was  over  and  his 
chief  interests  were  necessarily  centred  in  the 
success  of  his  children,  was  content  to  do  his 


12  JOHN   MILTON 

share  of  waiting  till  the  genius  of  his  son 
should,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  become  m&n> 
fest  to  the  world.  That  genius  was  slowly 
developing  itself  through  study,  contemplation, 
intercourse  with  nature,  and  occasional  woo- 
ing of  the  muse.  He  mastered  the  ancient 
classics  and  the  chief  writers  of  more  recent 
times  until  he  may  be  said  to  have  lived  with 
them.  He  contemplated  life  with  all  its  pos- 
sibilities, and  became  more  firmly  fixed  in  his 
determination  to  devote  himself  to  the  service 
of  humanity,  to  lead  a  life  that  should  be  a 
true  poem,  and  to  leave  behind  him  some 
child  of  his  imagination  that  posterity  would 
not  willingly  let  die.  He  watched,  too,  with 
poignant  anguish  the  headlong  course  of 
Charles  and  Laud,  toward  destruction,  and  saw 
that  they  would  involve  in  ruin  not  merely 
themselves  and  the  Church,  but  the  nation 
for  which  he  already  felt  the  burning  passion 
of  the  man  who  not  loving  easily,  loves  the 
more  deeply.  But  he  contemplated  also  the 
serene  beauty  of  the  peaceful  landscape  around 
him,  and  the  spirit  of  nature  took  hold  upon 
him  —  not  as  it  had  done  on  Shakspere  and 


LIFE  13 

was  to  do  on  Wordsworth  and  Byron  —  but  in 
a  true,  noble,  and  powerful  way.  Finally  he 
wrote  verse  to  relieve  his  pent-up  feelings  or 
to  oblige  friends,  yet  never  without  keeping 
his  eyes  fixed  on  the  masters  of  his  craft  and 
registering  a  solemn  vow  not  to  allow  himself 
to  be  tempted  by  easy  praise  to  abandon  the 
arduous  upward  path  on  which  his  feet  were 
set.  It  is  to  the  five  years  (1632-1637)  spent 
at  Horton  that  we  are  said  to  owe  "  L' Allegro," 
"II  Penseroso,"  "Arcades,"  "  Comus,"  and 
"  Lycidas  "  —  poems  so  perfect  that  many  critics 
laying  aside  their  judgment,  which  must  al- 
ways consider  quantity  as  well  as  quality  of 
work,  have  actually  regarded  them  as  the 
most  adequate  expression  of  Milton's  poetical 
genius.  This  they  are  not  if  the  sublime  in 
art  be  accorded  its  true  supremacy,  yet  they 
are  at  once  so  strong  and  so  exquisite  that 
the  fact  that  they  were  composed  at  Horton 
should  make  the  little  Buckinghamshire  village 
second  only  to  Stratford  in  interest  to  all 
lovers  of  English  poetry.1 

1  Milton  tells  us  that  he  paid  occasional  visits  to  London  to 
purchase  books  or  to  learn  something  new  in  mathematics  or 
music.  ("  Second  Defence.") 


14  JOHN   MILTON 

In  the  spring  of  1638  Milton  undertook  to 
put  the  finishing  touch  upon  his  education 
by  setting  out  for  Italy.  The  spell  that  that 
fair  but  fatally  dowered  land  exercises  on 
every  liberal  soul,  had  already  been  commu- 
nicated to  him  through  the  medium  of  her 
great  poets,  but  it  was  not  to  be  sealed  per- 
manently upon  his  spirit  as  it  has  been  since 
upon  Byron,  Shelley,  Landor,  and  Browning. 
He  was  fitter  than  these  to  penetrate  into 
Italy's  secret,  being  the  most  artistic  spirit 
England  has  ever  borne,  and  it  is  interest- 
ing to  speculate  what  a  longer  residence  under 
the  sky  that  smiles  upon  Naples  and  Florence 
and  Venice  would  have  meant  for  him  ;  but 
that  was  not  to  be.  Yet  we  may  be  sure 
that  no  nobler  stranger  has  ever  since  apostolic 
times  set  foot  upon  that  sacred  soil  so  often 
trod  by  alien  feet  —  not  Chaucer  or  Goethe, 
not  Luther  or  Bayard.  Shakspere  probably 
never  saw  the  land  that  his  genius  so  often 
adorned,  and  Dante  was  its  native  —  and  it  is 
with  Shakspere  and  Dante  alone  of  all  moderns 
that  we  may  fittingly  compare  Milton. 

The  details  of  his  journey  are  scant,  but  even 


LIFE  1 5 

the  few  facts  we  know  must  be  given  rapidly 
here.  Stopping  for  a  brief  space  at  Paris,  he 
met  Grotius,  and  then  proceeded  by  Nice, 
Genoa,  Leghorn,  and  Pisa,  to  Florence.  Here 
he  was  introduced  to  the  most  cultured  repre- 
sentatives of  that  day  of  Italy's  decline,  and 
frequented  their  academies,  and  paid  as  good 
Latin  compliments  as  he  received.  He  im- 
pressed all  who  met  him  by  his  beauty,  his 
grace,  his  mental  and  spiritual  attainments, 
and  if  the  tributes  paid  him  were  extravagant, 
they  nevertheless  retain  even  to  this  day  a 
note  of  sincerity.  We  do  not  know  whether 
the  sightless  Galileo  thought  him  an  angel  or 
an  Angle,  but  it  is  easy  to  agree  with  Dr. 
Garnett  that  —  "the  meeting  between  the  two 
great  blind  men  of  their  century  is  one  of  the 
most  picturesque  in  history;  it  would  have 
been  more  pathetic  still  if  Galileo  could  have 
known  that  his  name  would  be  written  in 
'  Paradise  Lost,'  or  Milton  could  have  fore- 
seen that  within  thirteen  years  he  too  would 
see  only  with  the  inner  eye,  but  that  the  calam- 
ity which  disabled  the  astronomer  would  re- 
store inspiration  to  the  poet." 


1 6  JOHN   MILTON 

From  Florence  Milton  went,  via  Siena,  to 
Rome,  where  he  remained  two  months,  and 
was  treated  with  consideration  in  spite  of  his 
imprudent  habit  of  discussing  religious  matters 
in  public.  He  was  fascinated  by  the  singing 
of  Leonora  Baroni,  on  whom  he  wrote  three 
Latin  epigrams,  but  he  is  silent,  so  critics 
have  observed,  about  the  effects  of  antiquity 
and  of  modern  plastic  art  upon  his  spirit.1 
His  natural  aptitude  was  for  music,  and  per- 
haps when  later,  his  Puritan  controversies  put 
by,  he  took  up  poetry  once  more,  his  loss  of 
sight  "inclined  him  to  leave  unsung  the  glories 
of  arts  he  could  no  longer  appreciate.  It  was 
different  with  nature,  whose  effects  he  could 
still  feel  and  whose  beauty  he  was  bound  by 
the  scheme  of  his  work  to  describe. 

Naples  was  the  next  stage  of  his  journey, 
and  there  tidings  reached  him  of  the  distracted 
political  state  of  his  native  land.  He  gave  up 
at  once  his  intention  of  proceeding  to  Sicily 
and  Greece,  but  was  leisurely  enough  in  his 
return.  He  again  spent  two  months  at  Rome 

1  He  tells  us  expressly  that  he  viewed  the  antiquities  of  Rome, 
and  the  company  of  Lucas  Holstein,  the  Vatican  librarian,  and 
other  scholars  would  indicate  that  he  did  not  waste  his  time. 


LIFE  17 

and  an  equal  period  at  Florence,  barring  a 
visit  to  Lucca,  and  proceeded  to  Venice  by 
way  of  Bologna,  where  an  Italian  lady  is  said 
to  have  fascinated  him.  The  sonnets  written 
in  her  native  language  lend  some  color  to  this 
statement,  which  would  at  least  furnish  addi- 
tional proof  of  Milton's  lack  of  essential  Eng- 
lish narrowness  ;  but  the  whole  affair  is  shadowy, 
and  the  sonnets  may  have  been  mere  exercises 
in  a  strange  tongue.  It  is  better  perhaps  to 
lay  stress  on  the  actual  friendship  formed  at 
Naples  with  the  venerable  Marquis  Manso, 
the  protector  of  Tasso  and  Marini,  and  upon 
the  noble  Latin  verses  in  which  Milton  repaid 
the  generosity  of  his  host  and  announced  his 
own  hope  of  some  day  acquiring  perennial 
fame  through  an  epic  upon  King  Arthur  and 
his  Table  Round.  It  would  be  too  painful  to 
lay  stress  upon  the  anguish  of  his  spirit  when 
he  reached  Geneva  from  Venice,  via  Verona 
and  Milan,  and  there  probably  heard  for  the 
first  time  of  the  death  of  the  friend  of  his  boy- 
hood and  of  his  riper  years,  the  man  who  had 
first  brought  him  in  touch  with  the  beautiful 
land  he  was  just  leaving,  —  Charles  Diodati. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   MAN    OF    AFFAIRS    (1640-1660) 

MILTON  once  more  set  foot  on  English  soil 
toward  the  end  of  July,  1639.  His  first  act  of 
any  moment  was  one  of  piety.  He  wrote  his 
greatest  and  practically  his  last  Latin  poem, 
the  "  Epitaphium  Damonis,"  in  honor  of  Diodati 
—  a  tribute  the  exquisite  sincerity  of  which 
its  foreign  medium  of  expression  cannot  im- 
pair, but  unfortunately  obscures  to  those  of 
his  race  whose  classical  education  has  been 
neglected.  It  was  also,  with  the  exception  of 
a  pair  of  sonnets,  to  be  the  last  of  his  elegiac 
poems,  for  his  father's  death  eight  years  later, 
just  as  his  mother's,  two  years  previously,  called 
forth  no  poetical  expression  of  grief.  For  Dio- 
dati, the  returned  traveller  could  not  but 
mourn  in  the  language  in  which  they  had 
exchanged  their  innermost  feelings,  and  which 
linked  them  both  with  the  land  from  which 

18 


LIFE  19 

one  sprang  and  to  which  the  other  was  still 
turning  regretful  eyes. 

His  elegy  finished,  he  set  himself  to  a  less 
congenial  but  in  every  way  honorable  task  —  he 
began  to  teach  his  two  nephews,  Edward  and 
John  Phillips,  sons  of  his  elder  sister  Anne, 
now  a  Mrs.  Agar.  He  lived  at  first  in  lodg- 
ings, his  younger  brother  Christopher  continu- 
ing to  reside  with  their  father  at  Horton ;  but 
in  a  short  time  he  found  it  convenient  to  take 
a  house  in  the  somewhat  suburban  Alders- 
gate  Street.  Here  he  taught  his  pupils  and 
watched  the  course  of  public  events. 

Milton  as  a  schoolmaster  may  suggest  to 
some  the  veriest  profanation  of  genius,  to 
others  that  irony  of  fate  at  which  we  smile 
or  jest;  but  no  one  who  has  read  the  tractate 
entitled  "  Of  Education,"  or  rightly  gauged 
the  poet's  character,  or  comprehended  the  true 
dignity  of  the  teacher's  office,  will  ever  regret 
the  quiet  months  devoted  to  pedagogical  pur- 
suits and  the  "  intermitted  studies."  So,  too, 
no  one  not  a  hopeless  partisan  of  the  Stuarts, 
/or  biassed  like  Mark  Pattison  in  favor  of  the 
scholarly  life,/will  regret  that  Milton  took  in- 


20  JOHN   MILTON 

terest  enough  in  public  affairs  to  smile  at 
Charles's  failure  to  subdue  Scotland  and  to 
wait  eagerly  for  the  Long  Parliament  to  throw 
open  the  doors  concealing  "that  two-handed 
engine." 

But  neither  teaching  nor  politics,  we  may 
be  sure,  seemed  to  him  at  that  time  worthy 
of  being  made  his  permanent  vocation.  His 
note-books  prove,  as  we  shall  see  later,  ^  that 
he  was  meditating  deeply  upon  the  great 
poem  he  felt  called  upon  to  write.  He  was 
preparing  to  be  a  vates,  when  circumstances 
determined  that  he  should  become,  not  a  dic- 
tator, but  a  dictator's  spokesman  and  champion. 
For  twenty  years  he  wrote  no  verse  save  a 
comparatively  small  number  of  sonnets,  and 
his  silence  during  a  period  when  most  poets 
do  their  best  work  might  easily  have  resulted 
in  England's  having  only  one  supreme  poet 
instead  of  two.  But  Providence  willed  other- 
wise, and  our  shudder  at  the  risk  our  litera- 
ture ran  should  not  make  us  forget  the  fact 
that  to  Milton's  participation  in  politics  we 
owe  not  only  the  most  magnificently  sonorous 
prose  ever  written  by  an  Englishman,  but 


LIFE  21 

also  much  of  the  force  and  nobility  of  "  Para- 
dise Lost "  itself.1 

It  was  the  resolute  spirit  shown  by  the 
Long  Parliament  in  its  early  days,  especially 
with  regard  to  ecclesiastical  grievances,  that 
plunged  Milton  into  politics  with  the  resolve 
"to  transfer  into  this  struggle  all  his  genius 
and  all  the  strength  of  his  industry."  The 
humbling  of  Charles,  the  arrest  and  imprison- 
ment of  Laud,  and  the  execution  of  Strafford 
had  shown  the  religious  and  political  reformers 
their  power,  and  had  brought  into  prominence 
not  merely  men  of  action,  but  also  a  crowd  of 
zealous  and  advanced  theorists,  and  of  vision- 
ary schemers  for  the  ordering  of  Church  and 
State.  It  is  always  so  with  revolutions.  The 
French  had  their  Abbe  Sieyes,  and  we  Ameri- 
cans had  scores  of  theorists  from  Jefferson 
down.  But  no  such  ideal  reformer  as  Milton 
has  ever  since  lifted  his  voice  above  the  din 
of  faction,  and  if  we  convict  him  of  partisan- 
ship, we  must  nevertheless  figure  him  to  our- 
selves as  a  seraphic  partisan.  To  fail  to  do 

1  See  Dr.  Garnett's  admirable  remarks  on  this  subject,  "  Life 
of  Milton,"  pp.  68,  69. 


22  JOHN   MILTON 

this  is  to  fail  to  comprehend  one  of  the  most 
inspiring  characters  in  all  history,  yet  thou- 
sands have  so  failed  because  they  could  not 
forgive  certain  coarse  expressions  character- 
istic of  the  times  and  circumstances  or  because 
they  were  not  capable  of  acknowledging  great- 
ness in  a  political  or  religious  opponent. 
Milton's  fame  has  suffered  from  their  aliena- 
tion, yet  surely  their  loss  has  been  the  greater, 
for  not  to  know  and  love  the  sublimest  of  all 
human  idealists  is  an  inestimable  misfortune. 
That  such  is  Milton's  transcendent  position 
cannot,  of  course,  be  proved,  but  it  is  perhaps 
admissible  for  an  admirer  to  believe  that  no 
man  ever  got  to  the  heart  of  the  master's 
writings  without  being  convinced  of  the  truth 
of  the  statement. 

Milton's  first  utterances  were  naturally  on 
the  subject  of  episcopacy,  the  abolition  of 
which  had  been  proposed  in  the  Commons, 
and  as  naturally  they  took  the  form  of 
rather  cumbrous  pamphlets.  To  some  critics 
it  is  now  difficult  not  merely  to  see  any  force 
in  his  arguments,  but  even  to  comprehend  at 
all  the  point  of  view  maintained  by  him  in 


LIFE  23 

the  five  tractates  of  1641-42.  Minute  study 
of  them  will  convince  us,  however,  of  Milton's 
grasp  of  the  situation,  of  his  logical  power, 
and  of  his  essential  purity  of  mind  and  heart. 
It  was  not  to  him  a  question  of  expediency 
that  he  was  considering ;  it  was  a  question 
whether  God  or  the  Devil  should  rule  in  Eng- 
land, if  not  in  the  world.  The  sublime  confi- 
dence with  which  he  promulgated  his  ideas 
of  Church  polity  moves  our  wonder;  the  im- 
passioned language  in  which  he  clothed  those 
ideas  moves  not  only  our  admiration  but  a 
sense  of  our  infinite  inferiority.  Such  swelling 
periods  of  prophecy  and  denunciation,  of  high 
purpose  and  holy  hope,  have  been  possible  to 
one  man  alone  —  to  the  future  author  of  "  Par- 
adise Lost."  Whether  or  not  we  love  Laud 
less  and  Milton  more,  whether  or  not  we  seek 
the  arena  of  religious  controversy,  we  cannot 
but  conclude  that  the  crisis  which  called  forth 
the  dithyrambic  close  of  the  tract  entitled 
"  Of  Reformation  in  England "  was  not  lack- 
ing in  momentous  results  to  England's  litera- 
ture and  to  the  character  and  work  of  her 
noblest  son. 


24  JOHN   MILTON 

The  outbreak  of  war  in  the  autumn  of  1642 
forced  upon  Milton  the  question  whether  he 
should  take  up  arms  in  defence  of  the  prin- 
ciples he  advocated.  We  know  his  exact 
course  of  reasoning,  and  thus  need  not  infer 
it.  He  could  serve  his  country  and  his  God 
better  with  his  pen  than  with  his  sword,  so  in- 
stead of  fighting,  he  wrote  his  sonnet  "  When 
the  Assault  was  Intended  to  the  City"  —  that 
superb  plea  for  the  inviolability  of  the  "Muse's 
bower."  To  blame  Milton  for  not  becoming  a 
soldier  is  like  blaming  Washington  for  not  writ- 
ing an  epic  on  the  Revolutionary  War  after  he 
had  sheathed  his  sword.  The  man  whose  imagi- 
nation was  already  revolving  the  war  in  heaven, 
was  not  wanted  on  the  fields  of  Naseby  and 
Dunbar:  the  prophet  of  the  glories  of  a  ren- 
ovated and  redeemed  England  had  faith 
enough  to  believe  that  God  would,  in  due 
season,  show  forth  the  man  who  should  ren- 
der those  glories  possible.  He  could  not  fore- 
see that  the  representatives  of  the  people  for 
whom  he  sang  and  Cromwell  fought  would 
one  day  refuse  the  meed  of  a  statue  to  their 
greatest  ruler  and  soldier;  but  could  he  rise 


LIFE  25 

from  the  dead  he  would  set  the  seal  of  his 
approval  upon  the  fiery  protest  against  a  na- 
tion's ingratitude  recently  wrung  from  a  poet 
into  whom  he  has  breathed  not  a  little  of 
his  own  impassioned  eloquence  and  love  of 
liberty :  — 

"  The  enthroned  Republic  from  her  kinglier  throne 
Spake,  and  her  speech  was  Cromwell's.   Earth  has  known 
No  lordlier  presence.     How  should  Cromwell  stand 
By  kinglets  and  by  queenlings  hewn  in  stone  F"1 

But  while  Oxford  was  protesting  her  loyalty 
and  Cornwall  was  rising  in  arms  and  the  king's 
cause  seemed  by  no  means  hopeless,  Milton, 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life  apparently,2  was 
falling  seriously  in  love.  Exactly  how  this 
came  about  is  not  known.  He  seems  to  have 
gone  to  Oxfordshire  in  the  spring  of  1643  to 
collect  a  debt  from  a  Cavalier  squire,  Richard 
Powell  by  name,  and  to  have  returned  to 
London  in  a  month  with  this  gentleman's 
daughter,  Mary,  as  his  bride.  A  party  of  her 

1  A.  C.  Swinburne  in  The  Nineteenth  Century  for  July,  1895. 
The  Conservative  government  has  since  accepted  as  a  gift  the 
bust  by  Bernini. 

Unless  we  believe  in  the  Bolognese  love  affair. 


26  JOHN   MILTON 

relatives  soon  after  visited  the  pair,  and  the 
young  wife  appears  to  have  enjoyed  their 
dancing  more  than  she  did  her  husband's 
philosophizing,  for  she  shortly  after  left  him 
under  promise  of  return  and  took  up  her 
abode  with  her  father,  from  whose  protection 
she  could  not  be  induced  to  withdraw,  in  spite 
of  Milton's  protestations,  until  about  two  years 
had  elapsed. 

As  a  matter  of  course  this  marriage  venture 
of  Milton's  —  the  most  mysterious,  perhaps, 
in  history  save  that  of  Sam  Houston,  the  hero 
of  San  Jacinto  —  has  been  much  discussed, 
and  Mary  Powell  has  found  stanch  advocates 
in  inveterate  maligners  of  her  husband.  An 
additional  element  of  disturbance  was  unwit- 
tingly contributed  to  the  controversy  by  Pro- 
fessor Masson  when  he  discovered  that  in  all 
likelihood  the  first  edition  of  Milton's  pamphlet 
on  "  The  Doctrine  and  Discipline  of  Divorce," 
was  issued  on  August  i,  1643,  i.e.  a  little  after 
or  just  about  the  time  of  his  wife's  departure 
for  her  father's  house.  It  had  been  previously 
believed  that  Edward  Phillips's  statement  that 
the  tract  was  written  after  Mary  Milton's  posi- 


LIFE  27 

tive  refusal  to  return  to  her  husband  was 
correct,  but  now  this  seems  to  apply  only  to 
the  second  and  enlarged  edition  of  the  follow- 
ing February.  Yet  what  sort  of  man  was 
this  who  could  argue  in  cold  blood  during 
his  honeymoon  about  the  justice  of  allowing 
divorce  for  incompatibility  of  temperament! 

Milton's  foes  would  have  his  friends  on  the 
hip  if  he  had  actually  argued  in  cold  blood  ; 
but  that  was  very  far  from  Milton's  way  of 
arguing  anything.  As  Dr.  Garnett  has  deftly 
shown,  the  first  edition  of  the  "  Doctrine  and 
Discipline  "  was  not  only  highly  idealistic  but 
profoundly  emotional,  and  was  just  the  sort 
of  protest  against  his  fate  that  might  have 
been  wrung  from  an  intense,  proud-spirited 
man  like  Milton  in  the  days  that  followed  his 
wife's  departure.  The  second  edition  was  his 
reasoned  plea,  though  it  too  was  full  of  emo- 
tion ;  the  first  was  the  almost  lyrical  outburst 
of  his  deeply  tried  soul  struggling  for  escape. 
If  any  one  will  read  the  noble  preface,  "To 
the  Parliament  of  England,  with  the  Assem- 
bly," he  will  be  forced  to  confess  that,  what- 
ever were  Milton's  domestic  reasons  for  writ- 


28  JOHN   MILTON 

ing,  he  nevertheless  wrote  in  all  honesty,  and 
speedily  passed  from  a  consideration  of  his 
own  case  to  an  impassioned  plea  for  reform 
in  the  interests  of  the  common  weal.  His 
resolutions  were  "  firmly  seated  in  a  square 
and  constant  mind,  not  conscious  to  itself  of 
any  deserved  blame,  and  regardless  of  un- 
grounded suspicions."  He  could  proudly  and 
sincerely  say,  "  I  have  already  my  greatest 
gain,  assurance,  and  inward  satisfaction  to 
have  done  in  this  nothing  unworthy  of  an 
honest  life  and  studies  well  employed."  He 
could  actually  compare  his  new  light  on  the 
subject  of  divorce  with  the  gospel  preached 
upon  the  continent  by  Willibrod  and  Winifrid, 
and  conclude  with  that  noblest  of  sentiments 
— "  Let  not  England  forget  her  precedence 
of  teaching  nations  how  to  live." 

Milton's  tract  was  therefore  sincere  and 
characteristic  of  him,  but  this  is  not  a  proof 
that  it  was  a  worthy  thing  to  write  and  pub- 
lish. Yet  perhaps  if  we  will  read  his  utterances 
carefully  and  remember  that  he  wrote  at  a 
time  when  every  liberal  mind  was  narrowly 
examining  the  structure  of  society  and  pro- 


LIFE  29 

jecting  discoveries  and  applications  of  new 
moral  and  political  truths,  we  shall  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  he  acted  not  only  con- 
sistently, but  worthily,  with  regard  to  this 
whole  divorce  matter.  If  we  condemn  him 
merely  because  our  views  on  the  question  of 
divorce  are  stricter  than  his,  —  our  ideal  of 
a  true  marriage  could  not  be  higher,  —  we 
have  just  as  much  right  to  condemn  him 
for  his  ultra-puritanism  or  his  ultra-republican- 
ism—  that  is,  we  have  no  right  to  condemn 
him  at  all,  for  we  are  obviously  called  upon 
to  judge  him  now  only  as  a  man  and  a  great 
creative  writer,  not  as  a  theorist  in  religion 
and  politics. 

But  can  Milton  be  absolved  of  blame  as  a 
man  for  his  treatment  of  his  first  wife  ?  One 
may  answer,  "Yes,  so  far  as  the  evidence 
goes."  His  demands  upon  the  girl  were  proba- 
bly excessive,  but  then  he  was  an  idealist  who 
had  somehow  made  a  bad  match.  If  she 
suffered,  so  did  he;  and  the  chances  are  a 
thousand  to  one  against  the  grave,  dignified 
man's  having  wantonly  offended  his  young 
wife,  while  they  are  not  nearly  so  great  against 


3O  JOHN   MILTON 

the  shallow  Royalist  girl's  having  uttered  light 
and  flippant  gibes  about  her  Puritan  husband's 
noblest  and  dearest  ideals.  As  to  Milton's 
alleged  attentions  to  the  "  very  handsome  and 
witty "  daughter  of  Dr.  Davis,  one  can  only 
say  that,  in  view  of  Milton's  sincerity  and 
courage  of  character,  they  are  an  additional 
proof  of  his  determination  to  announce  his 
principles  and  act  upon  them.  The  young 
lady  and  her  parents  were  probably  able  to 
look  out  for  themselves  and  must  have  shared 
Milton's  ideals,  or,  in  view  of  the  danger  attend- 
ing the  woman  from  the  state  of  the  law,  he 
would  have  been  asked  to  cease  his  visits. 
To  blame  him  for  being  "  light  of  love "  is 
simply  to  forget  that  strong  natures  bent  in 
one  direction  rebound  far  when  released.  Per- 
haps Mistress  Davis's  qualities  were  comple- 
mentary to  those  of  Mary  Powell,  or  perhaps 
gossips  mistook  a  Platonic  friendship  for  a  love 
affair.  Be  this  as  it  may,  we  know  that  in 
July  or  August,  1645,  the  wife  surprised  the 
husband  at  a  friend's  house,  and  that  a  recon- 
ciliation was  effected.  Perhaps,  as  has  been 
urged,  she  was  brought  to  terms  by  the  visits 


LIFE  3 1 

to  Mistress  Davis ;  but  on  the  face  of  things 
her  voluntary  return  is  a  circumstance  in 
Milton's  favor. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  in  detail  the 
divorce  pamphlets  which  proved  too  strong  a 
diet  even  for  Milton's  coreligionists  and  had  to 
be  published  without  license  —  a  fact  to  which 
we  owe  the  greatest  and  best  known  of  his 
prose  writings,  the  noble  "  Areopagitica,  a 
Speech  for  the  Liberty  of  Unlicensed  Print- 
ing." But  before  the  thread  of  his  married  life 
is  taken  up  once  more,  it  will  be  well  to  say 
a  few  words  about  his  relations  with  women  in 
general.  He  has  been  much  criticised  for 
them,  not  always  with  entire  justice.  If  he 
did  not  enjoy  much  happiness  with  his  first 
wife,  he  could  nevertheless  write  his  noble 
sonnet  to  his  second,  Katherine  Woodcock,1 
a  sufficient  tribute  to  any  woman,  though  per- 
haps borrowed  in  substance  from  a  similar 
sonnet  by  the  Italian  poet,  Bernadino  Rota; 
while  with  his  third  wife,  Elizabeth  Minshull, 

1  The  second  marriage  lasted  from  November,  1656,  to 
February,  1658.  The  marriage  for  convenience  with  the  "gen- 
teel" Mistress  Minshull  took  place  in  1663. 


32  JOHN   MILTON 

who  survived  him,  he  seems  to  have  lived  as 
congenially  as  could  be  expected  when  all  the 
circumstances  are  taken  into  account.  His 
daughters  by  his  first  wife  have  won  a  sym- 
pathy which  they  scarcely  deserve.  Reading 
aloud  in  languages  one  does  not  understand 
is  not  an  enjoyable  task;  but  what  are  we  to 
say  of  the  characters  and  dispositions  of  women 
who  could  lack  reverence  for  such  a  father? 
Admiration  and  sympathy  are  two  of  the  no- 
blest attributes  of  womanhood,  and  who  has 
ever  been  fitter  to  elicit  them  than  Milton  in  his 
blindness  ?  Perhaps  the  best  excuse  for  these 
daughters  is  the  fact  that  they  were  trained  in 
part  by  their  mother.  We  may  dismiss  this 
unpleasant  topic  with  the  remark  that  it  is  well 
to  note  that  in  the  scanty  tale  of  Milton's  Eng- 
lish sonnets  there  are  four  addressed  to  women 
in  which  there  is  not  a  line  to  make  us  believe 
that  he  had  a  low  estimate  of  the  sex,  and 
much  to  convince  us,  in  spite  of  the  often- 
quoted  lines  of  "Paradise  Lost"  which  repre- 
sent the  normal  view  of  the  period,  that  he  was 
at  times  capable  of  extending  to  them  that  intel- 
ligent admiration  which  the  mass  of  mankind 


LIFE  33 

are  only  just  beginning  to  recognize  as  their 
due.  This  conviction  is  rendered  almost  a  cer- 
tainty when  we  study  the  relations  of  the  poet 
with  the  famous  Lady  Ranelagh,  the  learned 
and  virtuous  Katherine  Boyle,  mother  of  "  the 
noble  youth,  Richard  Jones,"  whom  Milton 
taught  and  to  whom  he  indited  some  epistles. 
It  will  probably  be  impossible  to  root  from  the 
public  mind  the  notion  that  Milton  was  a  sour 
woman-hater  and  a  vindictive  partisan,  but  we 
may  be  sure  that  the  records  do  not  warrant  any 
such  conception  of  his  character,  and  we  should 
protest  emphatically  against  such  an  egregious 
assumption  as  that  of  Professor  Dowden  to 
the  effect  that  there  is  an  unlovely  Milton 
from  whom  we  are  all  anxious  to  avert  our 
gaze. 

Early  in  1646,  at  the  solicitation  of  Hum- 
phrey Moseley,  the  publisher,  who  seems  to 
have  known  what  a  favor  he  was  doing  man- 
kind, Milton,  who,  except  in  the  cases  of  his 
magnum  opiis  and  "  Samson  Agonistes,"  gener- 
ally waited  for  an  external  stimulus  to  literary 
undertakings,  brought  out  the  first  edition  of 
his  poems  in  two  parts,  English  and  Latin. 


34  JOHN   MILTON 

~VHe  prefixed  a  quotation  from  Virgil  which 
showed  that  he  regarded  the  publication  as 
premature.  In  view  of  the  great  praise  now 
given  to  the  minor  poems,  this  attitude  of  Mil- 
ton's might  seem  to  furnish  fresh  evidence  of 
the  irony  attaching  to  the  judgments  of  authors 
about  their  own  works ;  but  if  we  can  appre- 
ciate duly  the  transcendent  merits  of  "Para- 
dise Lost "  and  will  remember  that  the  scheme 
of  that  noble  work  was  even  then  occupying 
Milton's  thoughts,  his  unwillingness  to  rush  into 
print  will  smack  neither  of  the  irony  of  self- 
judgment  nor  of  false  modesty.  Be  this  as 
it  may,  it  was  an  unpropitious  time  for  the 
muses  that  he  or  his  publisher  chose ;  but  it 
was  not  many  years  before  he  was  plagiarized 
from  in  a  shocking  manner  by  one  Robert  Bar- 
ron,  and  if  imitation  be  the  sincerest  flattery, 
he  ought  to  have  been  pleased,  but  probably 
was  not.  Meanwhile  his  school  had  increased, 
and  he  had  moved  into  larger  quarters,  whither 
his  wife's  relatives,  who  had  been  dispossessed 
by  the  Parliamentarians,  presently  flocked  in 
a  way  to  make  one  suspect  that  they  had  had 
a  reason  for  helping  to  bring  husband  and  wife 


LIFE  35 

together  once  more.  Milton  seems  to  have 
done  his  duty  by  them  in  an  exemplary  manner, 
and  he  obviously  deserves  far  more  sympathy 
than  he  has  ever  got.  They  inspired  little 
poetry,  we  may  be  sure,  but  he  worked  away 
at  his  studies,  gathered  materials  for  his  "  His- 
tory of  England,"  and  perhaps  began  his  trea- 
tise "  De  Doctrina  Christiana,"  which  through 
a  train  of  curious  circumstances  did  not  see  the 
light  until  1823.  In  1647  his  father,  who  had 
been  living  with  him  since  the  lapsing  of  Chris- 
topher Milton  to  royalism  and  Roman  Catholi- 
cism, died,  and  the  consequent  addition  to  his 
income  led  him  to  give  up  all  his  pupils,  save 
his  nephews.  He  also  moved  to  a  smaller 
house  and  got  rid  of  the  daily  presence  of  the 
Powells.  So  he  lived  on  and  looked  out  at  the 
swift  succession  of  events  that  seemed  about  to 
change  entirely  the  course  of  English  history. 
He  was  still  conscious  of  great  powers  and  still 
yearning  for  an  opportunity  to  do  something 
for  his  people,  but  he  preferred  a  scholarly 
seclusion,  as  he  tells  us,  to  a  station  "at  the 
doors  of  the  court  with  a  petitioner's  face." 
With  the  king's  death,  however,  a  change 


36  JOHN  MILTON 

took  place  in  Milton's  affairs.  Charles  was 
beheaded  on  January  30,  1649;  in  exactly  two 
weeks  Milton  had  published  his  pamphlet 
"The  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates," 
in  which  he  maintained  the  right  of  "  any  who 
have  the  Power,  to  call  to  account  a  Tyrant, 
or  wicked  King,  and  after  due  Conviction,  to 
depose,  and  put  him  to  Death,  if  the  ordinary 
Magistrate  have  neglected,  or  denied  to  do  it.'* 
This  was  a  bold  and  certainly  expeditious  de- 
fence of  the  actions  of  his  party  —  how  bold 
rnay  be  somewhat  realized  when  we  remem- 
ber how  the  news  of  the  execution  of  Louis 
XVI.,  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  later,  re- 
sounded through  Europe.  Even  the  philosophic 
mind  of  Burke  was  unhinged  by  the  latter 
catastrophe;  the  former  and  more  astounding 
event  simply  woke  Milton  up.  Merely  as  a 
private  citizen  with  convictions  of  his  own 
and  as  an  enthusiast  whose  dash  for  the 
breach  showed  him  to  be  uninfluenced  by 
political  or  other  calculations,  he  dared  to  de- 
fend a  deed  which  had  filled  a  whole  people 
with  horror  and  consternation  ;  to  the  seduc- 
tions of  sympathy  stimulated  by  the  timely 


LIFE  37 

appearance  of  the  "  Eikon  Basilike,"  he  op- 
posed the  warning  voice  of  reason  and  the 
high,  clear  strains  of  duty.  If  he  took  an 
untenable  position  in  some  particulars,  he 
nevertheless  put  the  half-hearted  to  shame 
and  enrolled  his  own  name  high  among  the 
sons  of  liberty.  The  popular  leaders  could 
overlook  him  no  longer,  and  he  was  offered 
the  post  of  Latin  Secretary  to  the  Committee 
on  Foreign  Affairs.  The  salary  was  ample, — 
about  $5250  in  our  present  money,  —  and  the 
position  such  as  even  a  Milton  could  accept,  for 
he  was  not  merely  to  carry  on  diplomatic  cor- 
respondence in  the  language  of  scholars,  but 
also  to  be  the  recognized  spokesman  of  his 
party.  In  his  own  eyes  it  was  the  spokes- 
man of  liberty  and  his  native  land  that  he 
aspired  to  be,  and  the  proffered  office  gave 
him  an  opportunity  of  realizing  his  aspiration. 
There  could  be  little  or  no  thought  of  a  re- 
fusal, and  he  thus  became,  as  Dr.  Garnett 
happily  puts  it,  "the  Orpheus  among  the 
Argonauts  of  the  Commonwealth." 

His   first   work   as    Secretary   that    need   be 
noticed  here  was  his  "  Eikonoklastes,"  written  in 


38  JOHN   MILTON 

answer  to  the  "  Eikon  Basilike  "  of  Bishop  Gau- 
den,  then  generally  believed  to  be  the  work  of 
the  "  Royal  Martyr  "  himself.  Milton  seems  to 
have  shirked  the  task,  knowing  that  to  accom- 
plish it  effectively  would  necessitate  deprecia- 
tion of  the  dead  king  and  much  chaffering 
over  straws.  In  spite  of  this  known  reluc- 
tance on  his  part  and  of  the  obvious  fact 
that  much  of  his  matter  and  manner  was  de- 
termined by  the  nature  and  arrangement  of 
the  treatise  he  was  answering,  critics  have 
not  ceased  to  search  his  book  minutely  for 
data  on  which  to  rest  charges  against  his  per- 
sonal integrity,  his  consistency,  even  his  taste 
in  literature.  But  he  was  soon  to  undertake 
a  greater  task,  and  one  that  was  to  bring  him 
more  fame,  since  he  did  little  with  "  Eikono- 
klastes "  to  stem  the  tide  in  favor  of  the 
pseudo-religious  martyr.  The  learned  French- 
man, Claude  de  Saumaise,  better  known  as 
Salmasius,  the  discoverer  of  the  Palatine 
Ms.  of  the  Greek  Anthology,  had  been  em- 
ployed to  unmask  the  batteries  of  his  pon- 
derous erudition,  so  valued  at  the  time,  in 
defence  of  Charles  I.  His  "  Defensio  Regia" 


LIFE  39 

appeared  in  the  latter  part  of  1649,  and  Milton 
was  directed  by  the  Council  to  answer  it.  He 
did  at  the  cost  of  his  sight.  For  some  years 
his  eyes  had  been  failing,  and  one  was  already 
gone.  He  was  advised  that  any  further  strain 
would  speedily  induce  total  blindness,  yet  he 
never  wavered  in  the  performance  of  his  duty. 
He  calmly  faced  the  loss  of  a  sense  that 
every  true  scholar  must  value  more  than  life 
itself;  he  put  from  him  all  anticipation  of  the 
noble  pleasure  he  had  looked  forward  to  de- 
riving from  the  first  sight  of  his  great  poem 
in  print;  he  may  even  have  despaired  of  ever 
composing  the  poem  at  all ;  he  looked  forward 
to  the  miseries  of  a  cheerless  old  age,  and 
without  repining  accepted  a  commission  that 
could  not  under  any  circumstances  have  been 
specially  grateful  to  him  —  all  because  he 
deemed  it  right  that  his  country  and  party 
should  make  a  proper  reply  to  the  charges 
that  had  been  laid  against  them  in  the  forum 
of  European  opinion.  If  a  sublimer  act  of 
patriotic  self-sacrifice  has  ever  been  performed, 
it  has  surely  never  been  recorded.  And  yet 
readers  have  been  found  who  could  calmly 


4O  JOHN  MILTON 

dissect  the  "  Pro  Populo  Anglicano  Defensio 
contra  Salmasium "  and  argue  from  it  that 
its  author  had  not  merely  a  bad  cause,  but  a 
bad  temper  and  a  worse  taste.  There  have 
been  critics  who  have  imagined  that  it  is  proper 
to  judge  a  seventeenth  century  controversialist 
by  standards  more  talked  about  than  acted 
upon  in  the  nineteenth.  There  have  even 
been  friends  of  Milton  who,  forgetting  that 
the  man  is  and  ought  to  be  greater  than  the 
poet,  have  wished  that  he  had  never  per- 
formed this  act  of  self-sacrifice  that  makes 
him  the  true  Milton  of  song  and  history^ 

And  now  by  the  spring  of  1652  the  Milton 
who  had  won  the  plaudits  of  cultivated  Italians 
for  his  beauty  and  his  grace,  the  Milton,  who 
had  looked  on  nature's  face  and  found  her 
fair,  the  Milton  who  had  at  last  been  brought 
to  mingle  with  the  affairs  of  men  at  a  critical 
juncture  in  his  country's  history,  was  totally 
blind,  an  object  of  pity,  a  man  who  was  ap- 
parently without  a  future.  It  was  due  to  the 
fact  that  he  was  Milton  and  no  one  else  that 
he  did  not  succumb  but  became  the  poet  of 
"  Paradise  Lost."  And  as  if  to  complete  his 


LIFE  41 

misfortunes,  the  death  of  his  wife  left  him 
\  the  blind  father  of  three  little  girls.  Under 
such  circumstances  he  can  have  thought  little 
of  his  sudden  leap  into  European  fame  through 
the  complete  victory  he  had  gained  over  Sal- 
masius.  That  victory,  like  all  partisan  victo- 
ries, was  dearly  bought,  for  the  price  paid  was 
nothing  less  than  the  consciousness  that  he 
was  execrated  by  hundreds  of  thousands  of  his 
fellow-countrymen. 

The  literary  duel  which  cost  Milton  his 
sight  and  Salmasius  his  life,  according  to  the 
doubtless  exaggerated  story,  was  followed  by 
a  sorry  squabble  which  would  be  regrettable 
but  for  the  fact  that  it  led  Milton  to  make 
certain  autobiographical  confessions  of  great 
value.  A  scurrilous  tract  was  written  against 
him  by  a  broken-down  parson,  Peter  du  Mou- 
lin by  name,  who  managed  to  keep  his 
identity  well  concealed.  Milton  was  led  by 
plausible  reasons  to  believe  that  his  reviler 
was  one  Alexander  Morus,  a  Scoto- French- 
man, pastor  and  professor  of  Sacred  History 
at  Amsterdam,  and  a  resident  in  Salmasius's 
household,  in  which  he  did  not  conduct  him- 


XP51™*^ 
Y  ^        o*  THB 

UNIVERSITY 

.a^^ 


42  JOHN   MILTON 

i 

self  with  perfect  chastity.  Morus,  hearing 
that  Milton  was  contemplating  a  reply  to  the 
anonymous  pamphlet,  and  fearing  the  weight 
of  his  hand,  hastened  to  assert  his  innocence 
in  the  affair.  Milton  would  listen  to  nothing, 
however,  and  published  his  reply  in  1654. 
Then  Morus  was  literally  flogged  into  taking 
up  whatever  literary  weapons  he  could  find, 
but  Milton  crushed  him  with  another  tract  the 
following  year.  We  shall  refer  to  these/  pro- 
ductions again,  but  we  must  confess  here  that 
nothing  connected  with  Milton's  life  is  less 
edifying.  It  should  be  remembered,  however, 
that  no  man,  not  even  a  Milton,  can  be  ex- 
pected to  be  far  in  advance  of  his  times  in 
his  methods  of  personal  controversy,  and  that 
controversy  was  a  prime  constituent  of  the 
intellectual  atmosphere  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 

Milton's  State  Papers  are  less  disquieting 
reading  than  his  controversial  fulminations. 
It  seems  quite  clear  that  while  he  was  but 
carrying  out  the  wishes  and  plans  of  his 
superiors  in  office  he  threw  into  his  letters  to 
foreign  potentates  not  a  little  of  his  own  noble 


LIFE  43 

spirit.  Whether  he  was  able,  even  before  he 
lost  his  sight,  to  affect  the  policy  of  Cromwell, 
which  he  certainly  ventured  to  criticise,  is 
very  doubtful ;  but  he  was  none  the  less  the 
spokesman  of  his  party  while  living,  and  he 
has  ever  since  been  its  articulate  voice.  Per- 
haps it  is  just  as  well  that  in  revolving  in 
imagination  those  eventful  years  of  English 
history  we  should  not  confuse  the  two  domi- 
nant conceptions  that  come  to  us  —  that  we 
should  always  be  able  to  distinguish  Crom- 
well's vigor  and  Milton's  godlike  utterance. 

The  blind  man's  utterance  was  in  some  re- 
spects more  potent  than  the  Protector's  vigor, 
for  the  latter  could  not  be  transmitted  to 
Richard  Cromwell  or  to  any  other  survivor, 
while  Milton  could  and  did  continue  to  incul- 
cate his  lofty  conceptions  of  the  true  nature 
of  Church  and  State.  His  blindness  and  his 
enforced  confinement  to  his  home  and  the 
companionship  of  a  few  choice  friends  like 
Andrew  Marvell,  his  assistant  secretary,  and 
the  Cyriack  Skinner  and  Henry  Lawrence  of 
the  sonnets,  doubtless  proved  to  him  a  bless- 
ing in  disguise,  for  he  could  not  see  how  the 


44  JOHN   MILTON 

fabric  of  popular  government  was  rushing  to 
its  fall.  He  heard  enough  to  disquiet  him, 
and  he  doubtless  brooded  over  what  he  heard, 
but  his  practical  withdrawal  from  the  world 
must  have  deadened  the  shock  of  the  Restora- 
tion and  rendered  less  vivid  his  solicitude  as 
to  his  own  fate.  To  those,  however,  who 
have  studied  the  shameful  history  of  England 
for  the  year  J^SQ  the  isolation  of  the  blind 
poet  but  adds  to  the  pathos  of  the  picture 
he  presents — Ja  Republican  Samson,  captive 
in  the  midst  of  his  contemptible  foes/  Yet 
even  the  pathos  of  this  picture  should  not 
make  us  wish  with  Mark  Pattison  that  Milton 
had  never  sunk  the  poet  in  the  man  of  affairs. 
It  seems  as  idle  to  argue  that  "  Paradise  Lost " 
would  have  been  the  poem  it  is  without  the 
poetic  interregnum  of  1640-1660,  as  it  is  to 
argue  that  Milton  would  have  been  as  great 
a  man  without  it.  Those  critics  may  indeed 
be  right  who  maintain  that  Milton's  nature 
was  subdued  to  what  it  worked  in,  "  like  the 
dyer's  hand,"  that  the  Puritan  controversialist 
sometimes  got  the  better  of  the  poet  long  after 
occasion  for  controversy  had  passed  away  (as 


LIFE  45 

if  Milton  could  ever  have  thought  this!)  — 
but  such  criticism  means  merely  that  Milton 
had  not  the  universality  of  genius,  the  abso- 
lute perfection  of  artistic  balance  that  char- 
acterize Homer,  and  perhaps  Shakspere,  alone 
of  the  world's  poets.  No  one  has  ever 
claimed  such  universality,  such  perfect  bal- 
ance for  him ;  his  sublime  elevation  of  con- 
summate nobility  being  sufficient  basis  for 
his  eternal  fame. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE    SUPREME    POET   (1661-16/4) 

IT  is  easy  enough  to  infer  that  Milton  did  not 
fully  understand  the  signs  of  the  times  from 
the  fact  that  he  published  two  of  his  idealistic 
political  and  theological  tracts  in  1659,  an<i 
one,  the  "Ready  and  -Easy  Way  to  Establish 
a  Free  Commonwealth,"  not  two  months  be- 
fore Charles  II.  reentered  his  kingdom.  If 
he  had  understood  the  times  thoroughly,  and 
perceived  of  what  gross  clay  his  fellow-country- 
men were  made,  he  would  hardly  have  had  the 
spirit  to  pen  his  eloquent  periods.  Yet  he 
knew  more  or  less  what  was  coming,  and  he 
displayed  his  mat'chless  courage  in  protesting 
the  justice  of  Charles  I.'s  execution  on  the  eve 
of  the  triumphal  advent  of  Charles  II.  He  was 
not  foolhardy,  however,  for  early  in  May  he  left 
his  house  and  went  into  hiding  in  Bartholomew 
Close,  Smithfield. 

46 


LIFE  47 

If  either  king  or  Parliament  had  been  bloody- 
minded,  Milton  would  almost  certainly  have 
been  brought  to  the  scaffold.  His  writings 
were  burned  by  the  hangman  on  August  27, 
but  influential  friends  made  it  possible  for  his 
name  to  be  omitted  from  the  list  of  twenty 
persons  who  were  proscribed  in  addition  to  the 
authentic  regicides.  He  actually  escaped  arrest 
for  a  long  while,  and  when  this  came,  suffered 
only  from  the  exaction  of  heavy  fees.  Finally 
he  found  a  refuge  in  Holborn,  his  nerves 
shaken,  and  his  property  greatly  reduced, 
partly  in  consequence  of  his  political  affilia- 
tions-. There  is  nothing  more  pathetic  in  his- 
tory than  this  return  of  Milton  to  the  outer 
world.  nBlind,  reviled,  despised  by  his  own 
children,  his  ideals  shattered,  his  health  im- 
paired, he  had  but  one  comfort,  —  his  undented 
conscience;  and  but  one  hope,  —  the  completion 
of  the  great  poem  he  had  already  begun] 

But  by  degrees  his  condition  began  to  mend. 
His  third  marriage  restored  order  to  his  home 
and  prevented  his  daughters  from  selling  his 
books.  His  friends  visited  him  faithfully,  and 
his  organ  was  a  source  of  unfailing  pleasure. 


48  JOHN   MILTON 

Readers  and  amanuenses  were  provided,  and 
the  labor  of  composition  went  on,  interrupted 
only  by  his  own  singular  inaptitude  for  work 
at  certain  seasons.  By  1663,  five  years  after  its 
inception,  the  first  draft  of  the  immortal  epic 
was  probably  completed ;  in  two  years  more 
it  was  in  all  likelihood  fit  for  the  printer ;  but 
the  fatal  Plague  and  Fire  doubtless  impeded 
business  negotiations,  and  certainly  sent  the 
poet  down  to  Chalfont  St.  Giles,  where  the 
interesting  Quaker,  Thomas  Ellwood,  visited 
him  and  asked  the  famous  question  which  prob- 
ably led  to  the  composition  of  "  Paradise  Re- 
gained." Before,  however,  the  latter  poem  was 
published  along  with  "Samson  Agonistes "  in 
1671,  the  greatest  epic  since  "  The  Divine 
Comedy"  had  passed  so  as  by  fire  through 
the  sapient  hands  of  the  licenser,  the  Reverend 
Thomas  Tomkyns,  and  had  been  printed  by 
Samuel  Simmons  (in  1667)  on  terms  that  have 
been  made  the  subject  of  many  critical  homilies. 
Mr.  Simmons  may  have  driven  a  hard  bar- 
gain, though  there  is  much  room  to  doubt  it ; 
but  he  did  better  by  Milton  and  his  epic  than 
a  good  many  modern  critics  have  done  who  are 


LIFE  49 

not  supposed  to  hold  chairs  in  the  School  of 
Cobbett.  We  are  told  now  that  people  do  not 
read  "  Paradise  Lost,"  and  that  its  subject  is 
antiquated  and  a  little  absurd,  especially  since 
the  theory  of  evolution  has  thrown  grave  doubts 
upon  the  lion's  ever  having  pawed  to  extricate 
his  hinder  parts.  If  this  be  true  of  the  public, 
and  if  our  critics  are  to  judge  poets  from  the 
point  of  view  of  Cobbett's  so-called  common 
sense  or  of  Huxley's  epoch-making  science,  it 
may  well  be  doubted  whether  printer  Simmons 
was  not  more  a  child  of  the  muses  than  one 
is  likely  to  jostle  to-day  on  the  streets  of  any 
of  our  great  cities.  But  Simmons's  niggardly 
pounds  have  either  been  quite  worn  out  or  have 
forgotten  that  they  ever  took  part  in  a  pru- 
dent or  a  shabby  transaction,  and  a  similar  fate 
awaits  the  Cobbett  critics  and  the  public  that 
pays  attention  to  them.  "  Paradise  Lost  "  has 
set  a  seal  upon  Milton's  glory  that  can  be 
effaced  or  unloosed  by  angelic  power  alone  — 
by  the  might  of  the  angel  who  shall  in  the  ful- 
ness of  time  blow  the  last  trump. 

With   regard   to   the  pendant   epic   and  .the 
noble   drama  in   classical  style  whose  date  of 


50  JOHN   MILTON 

composition  is  uncertain,  little  need  be  said  here 
save  that  those  persons  who  refrain  from  read- 
ing them  stand  greatly  in  their  own  light. 
Neither  can  claim  the  preeminence  in  our 
poetry  that  belongs  of  right  to  "  Paradise  Lost," 
but  none  the  less  both  poems  are  worthy  of 
Milton,  and  therefore  of  our  admiration  and  love. 
They  may  give  evidence  of  the  declining  powers 
of  his  mighty  genius,  or  they  may,  more  prob- 
ably, represent  that  genius  moving  in  regions 
less  elevated  and  pure ;  but  they  are  worthy  to 
shine  through  their  own  lustre,  and  to  live 
through  their  own  vitality.  Their  comparative 
unpopularity  is  proof  of  nothing  save  of  the 
proverbial  isolation  of  the  noble ;  but  their  exist- 
ence is  proof  of  the  fact  that  in  a  blind  old  age 
Milton  would  be  content  with  nothing  less  than 
a  strenuous  and  lofty  use  of  his  divinely  be- 
stowed powers.  He  could  not,  like  his  Naza- 
rene  hero,  pull  down  the  pillars  of  an  ungodly 
state  upon  the  heads  of  its  citizens,  although 
he  would  not  have  shirked  the  self-destruction 
involved ;  but  he  could  still  sing  in  exultant  tones 
of  the  triumphs  of  virtue  and  of  the  justice  and 
majesty  and  mercy  of  God. 


LIFE  5 i 

That  mercy  was  shown  him  in  his  last  years 
in  fuller  measure  than  he  perhaps  expected, 
or  than  his  political  and  ecclesiastical  foes 
would  have  admitted  to  be  his  due.  He  was 
passed  by  in  ignorance  or  contempt  by  the 
great  world ;  but  here  and  there  a  judicious 
celebrity  like  Dryden  would  pay  his  court  to 
him,  and  the  old  friends  remained  faithful. 
The  gout  afflicted  him,  but  not  enough  to 
keep  him  from  singing.  He  had  the  pleasure 
of  utilizing  manuscripts  prepared  in  better  days, 
and  of  thus  discharging  his  debt  toward  pos- 
terity with  the  utmost  punctiliousness.  The 
small  Latin  grammar  (1669),  the  "History  of 
Britain"  (1670),  the  "Art  of  Logic"  (1672), 
the  tract  on  "  True  Religion,  Heresy,  Schism, 
Toleration"  (1673),  the  revised  and  enlarged 
edition  of  the  "Minor  Poems"  (1673),  the 
"Familiar  Epistles"  (in  Latin,  1674),  is  a 
catalogue  of  undertakings  of  no  transcendent 
moment,  but  amply  sufficient  to  prove  that 
Milton  did  not  pass  many  completely  idle 
days.  His  political  and  diplomatic  corre- 
spondence and  his  treatise  on  "Christian  Doc- 
trine "  could  not  of  course  see  the  light  then, 


52  JOHN   MILTON 

but  the  latter  at  least  must  have  occupied  him 
more  than  it  does  most  mortals  now. 

Yet  revising  and  publishing  old  works,  and 
listening  to  the  Bible  and  the  classics,  as  read 
to  him  by  his  friends,  and  playing  and  hear- 
ing music  were  not,  we  may  be  sure,  the  chief 
delight  of  the  aged  Milton.  Nor  was  this  to 
be  found  in  recollections  of  the  tremendous 
and  perilous  times  through  which  he  had 
passed,  in  reminiscences  of  Cromwell  and  other 
great  men,  or  even  in  pardonable  -  pride  of  the 
quorum  pars  magna  kind.  His  chief  delight, 
in  spite  of  his  blindness,  was  in  his  visions 
—  his  visions  of  empyrean  glory,  denied  to  all 
other  men  save  his  three  compeers,  Homer, 
Shakspere,  and  Dante.  With  such  visions 
he  lived  until  the  end  came,  on  November  8, 
1674,  having  tasted  the  blessings  of  immortality 
while  yet  a  mortal. 

But  what,  in  conclusion,  are  the  main  ideas 
about  Milton  the  man  that  we  should  carry 
away,  whether  from  reading  a  mere  sketch 
like  the  above,  or  from  studying  Professor 
Masson's  monumental  biography,  probably  the 
most  elaborate  tribute  ever  paid  to  a  man  of 


LIFE  53 

letters  ?  This  question  is  not  easy  to  answer, 
because  it  is  never  easy  to  speak  adequately 
about  a  supreme  genius ;  but  we  must  attempt 
some  sort  of  answer. 

In  the  first  place,  we  ought  to  remember 
that  Milton  is  the  great  idealist  of  our  Anglo- 
Saxon  race.  In  him  there  was  no  shadow  of 
turning  from  the  lines  of  thought  and  action 
marked  out  for  him  by  his  presiding  genius. 
His  lines  may  not  be  our  lines ;  but  if  we 
cannot  admire  to  the  full  his  ideal  steadfast- 
ness of  purpose  and  his  masterful  accomplish- 
ment, it  is  because  our  own  capacity  for  the 
comprehension  and  pursuit  of  the  ideal  is  in 
so  far  weak  and  vacillating.  And  it  is  this 
pure  idealism  of  his  that  makes  him  by 
far  the  most  important  figure,  from  a  moral 
point  of  view,  among  all  Anglo-Saxons ;  for  the 
genius  of  the  race  is  practical,  not  ideal,  —  com- 
promise is  everywhere  regarded  with  favor  as 
a  working  principle,  —  and  the  main  lesson  we 
have  all  to  learn  is  how  to  stand  out  unflinch- 
ingly for  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good, 
regardless  of  merely  present  and  practical  con- 
siderations. We  have  glorified  the  compromis- 


54  JOHN    MILTON 

ing  man  of  action  at  the  expense  of  the  ideal 
theorist  until  we  have  deluded  ourselves  into 
believing  that  men,  who  are,  above  all,  reasoning 
creatures,  have  succeeded  best  when  they  have 
acted  illogically,  and  we  have  thus  held  back 
reforms  by  contenting  ourselves  with  halfway 
improvements.  A  due  admiration  for  Milton's 
unflinching  idealism,  both  of  thought  and  action, 
will  at  least  make  it  impossible  for  us  to 
tolerate  the  charlatanism  of  comjm)mise. 

In  the  second  place,  we  should  admire  Mil- 
ton's consummate  power  of  artistic  accomplish- 
ment. He  is  the  master  workman  of  our 
men  of  letters,  and  this  genius  for  perfection 
manifested  itself  in  all  that  he  undertook.  In 
him  there  was  no  haste  or  waste.  Whether 
as  a  youthful  student  at  school  or  college,  or 
as  a  scholarly  recluse  among  his  books  at 
Horton,  or  as  a  traveller  seeking  culture,  or 
as  a  schoolmaster,  or  as  a  political  and  theo- 
logical controversialist,  or  as  diplomatic  secre- 
tary, or  finally  as  a  great  epic  poet,  Milton  is 
always  found,  not  merely  doing  successfully 
and  admirably,  but  doing  his  marvellous  best. 
There  are  as  few  ups  and  downs  in  his  work 


LIFE  5  5 

of  whatever  kind. as  are  to  be  found  in  the 
works  of  any  other  man  save  perhaps  Homer. 
He  is  always  girded.  Slowness  and  some- 
what of  sluggishness  may  perhaps  be  charged 
against  him,  but  in  view  of  his  lofty  conception 
of  the  need  of  adequate  preparation,  such  a 
charge  must  be  very  tentative.  He  is  par 
excellence  the  perfect  conscious  artist  among 
Anglo-Saxons  —  as  unerring  as  Raphael,  as 
sublime  as  Michelangelo. 

But  he  is  more  than  idealist  or  artist  —  he 
was  a  superlatively  noble,  brave,  truly  conscien- 
tious man,  who  could  never  have  intentionally 
done  a  mean  thing ;  who  was  pure  and  clean 
in  thought,  speech,  and  action ;  who  was  patri- 
otic to  the  point  of  sublime  self-sacrifice ;  who 
loved  his  neighbor  to  the  point  of  risking  his 
life  for  republican  principles  of  liberty ;  who, 
finally,  spent  his  every  moment  as  in  the  sight 
of  the  God  he  both  worshipped  and  loved. 
Possessed  of  sublime  powers,  his  thought  was 
to  make  the  best  use  of  them  to  the  glory  of 
God  and  the  good  of  his  fellow-man.  We 
may  not  think  that  he  always  succeeded ;  but 
who  among  the  men  of  our  race  save  Wash- 


56  JOHN  MILTON 

ington  is  such  an  exemplar  of  high  and  holy 
and  effective  purpose  ?  Beside  his  white  and 
splendid  flame  nearly  all  the  other  great  spirits 
of  earth  burn  yellow,  if  not  low.  Truly,  as 
Wordsworth  said,  his  soul  was  like  a  star ;  and, 
if  it  dwelt  apart,  should  we  therefore  love  it 
the  less?  It  is  more  difficult  to  love  the  sub- 
lime than  to  love  the  approximately  human, 
but  the  necessity  for  such  love  is  the  essence 
of  the  first  and  greatest  commandment. 

In  conclusion,  we  may  remember  that  what- 
ever may  be  thought  of  the  claims  just  set  forth, 
which  will  not  be  admitted  in  their  entirety 
by  any  one  who  has  not  made  Milton  an  object 
of  lifelong  devotion,  there  are  two  facts  that 
render  a  study  of  his  life  and  works  essential 
to  all  persons  who  would  fain  have  the  slight- 
est claim  to  be  considered  cultured  men. 

The  first  is  that  Milton  has  unquestionably 
influenced  his  country's  literature  more  than 
any  other  English  man  of  letters,  unless  it  be 
Shakspere.  Although  he  did  not  live  to  reap 
the  reward  of  the  fame  that  "  Paradise  Lost " 
began  to  attract,  even  before  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  he  must  have  felt  sure 


LIFE  57 

that  he  had  built  himself  an  enduring  monu- 
ment. His  conviction  was  true.  Certainly, 
from  the  appearance  of  Addison's  criticism 
of  the  great  epic  to  the  present  day,  no  Eng- 
lish poet  of  any  note  has  failed  at  one  time  or 
another  to  pass  under  his  spell.  Even  Pope 
borrowed  from  him ;  and  Thomson,  Dyer,  Col- 
lins, and  Gray  were  his  open  disciples.  What 
Cowper  and  Wordsworth  would  have  been 
without  him  is  hard  to  imagine.  The  youthful 
^eats  imitated  him,  Byron  tried  to  rival  him, 
and  Shelley  sang  that  "his  clear  sprite  yet 
reigns  o'er  earth  the  third  among  the  sons  of 
light."  As  for  Landor,  Tennyson,  Browning, 
Arnold,  and  Swinburne,  their  direct  or  in- 
direct debt  to  him  is  plain  to  every  student. 
With  regard  to  his  prose,  which  has  never 
been  sufficiently  studied,  the  case  has  been 
somewhat  different.  It  is  the  old  story  of 
the  bow  of  Ulysses.  But  it  cannot  be  doubted 
that  if  on  the  formal  side  our  modern  writers 
look  back  to  Cowley  and  Dryden,  and  that  if 
Burke  is  the  only  specific  author  in  whom  a 
critic  like  Lowell  can  discover  definite  traces 
of  the  influence  of  Milton,  there  has  never 


58  JOHN   MILTON 

been  a  master  of  sonorous  and  eloquent  prose 
who  did  not  owe  more  than  he  was  perhaps 
aware  of  to  the  author  of  "  Areopagitica." 

The  second  fact  is  equally  patent,  but  less 
often  insisted  upon.  It  is  that  in  the  tri- 
umphant progress  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race, 
whether  in  the  mother  island,  in  America,  or 
in  Australia,  (whatever  has  been  won  for  the 
cause  of  civic  or  religious  or  mental  libert) 
has  been  won  along  lines  that  Milton  wouk 
have  approved  in  the  main  had  he  been  living 
has  been  won  by  men  more  or  less  inspirec 
by  him ;  and  will  be  kept  only  by  men  who 
are  capable  of  appreciating  rightly  the  height 
and  breadth  and  depth  of  his  splendid  and 
ineffable  personality. 


PART    II.  — WORKS 
CHAPTER   I 

EARLIEST    POEMS    IN    ENGLISH 

IN  discussing  Milton's  minor  poems,  exclu- 
sive of  the  sonnets,  it  is  well  to  adopt  some 
convenient  lines  of  division.  There  is  so 
little  that  is  juvenile  about  his  work  that  the 
usual  twofold  classification  will  hardly  suffice ; 
there  is  such  variety  that  his  own  separation 
into  Latin  and  English  is  not  fully  satisfac- 
tory. Perhaps  we  shall  do  well  to  adopt  a 
new  division  of  our  own  —  to  treat  first  the 
English  poems  written  before  the  retirement  at 
Horton,  excluding  the  elegies ;  next  the  Latin 
poems,  except  the  "  Epitaphium  Damonis," 
and  kindred  verses  ;  then  the  companion  poems, 
"  L'Allegro  "  and  "  II  Penseroso,"  with  a  few 
pendant  pieces  ;  then  "  Arcades  "  and  "  Comus," 
both  being  masques;  and  finally  "  Lycidas," 
59 


60  JOHN   MILTON 

together  with  the  other  elegies  of  which  it  is 
the  crown.  This  division  has  the  advantage 
of  being  sufficiently  chronological,  while  at 
the  same  time  it  groups  the  poems  according 
to  their  kinds. 

We  have  already  seen  that  as  a  boy  of 
fifteen  Milton  attempted  paraphrases  of  Psalms 
cxiv.  and  cxxxvi.  It  was  just  such  a  beginning 
as  might  have  been  expected  of  him,  and  as  the 
pieces  probably  represent  all  that  we  have  of 
his  ante-Cambridge  compositions,  they  possess 
considerable  interest.  Minute  critics  have  in- 
ferred from  them  his  acquaintance  with  Spenser 
and  Sylvester's  translation  of  Du  Bartas,  but 
it  would  be  fairer  to  lay  stress  on  the  original 
vigor  displayed. 

"  And  caused  the  golden-tressed  sun 
All  the  day  long  his  course  to  run," 
and 

"  The  ruddy  waves  he  cleft  in  twain 

Of  the  Erythraean  main," 

are  couplets  premonitory  of  the  splendid  rhythm 
of  the  later  works,  whether  or  not  they  contain 
borrowed  epithets. 

The  English  poems  composed  at  Cambridge 


WORKS  6 I 

number  exactly  eleven,  if  the  little  "  Song  on 
May  Morning"  be  assigned  to  that  period. 
Five  of  these,  the  elegies  on  the  "  Fair  Infant " 
and  the  Marchioness  of  Winchester,  the  two 
humorous  pieces  on  Hobson,  the  carrier,  and 
the  lines  on  Shakspere,  can  be  best  discussed 
in  detail  along  with  "  Lycidas."  Two  of  the 
others  are  sonnets,  and  will  be  appropriately 
treated  with  their  fellow-poems  in  this  form. 
We  are  thus  left  to  take  account  of  only 
four  pieces,  a  complete  and  a  fragmentary 
ode,  a  song,  and  an  academical  exercise  —  an 
amount  of  verse  that  would  be  unworthy  of 
separate  treatment  but  for  the  fact  that  it  con- 
tains Milton's  single  ode,  one  of  the  supreme 
specimens  of  its  class  in  our  literature.  Before 
discussing  it,  however,  we  must  remember  that 
while  these  eleven  Cambridge  poems  do  not 
represent  great  fecundity,  they  do  represent 
both  scope  and  mastery  of  genius.  The  two 
serious  elegies  are  excellent,  the  lines  on  Shak- 
spere are  noble  and  indicative  of  a  fine  culture, 
and  the  sonnets  are  marked  by  pure,  if  serious, 
charm.  In  short,  it  is  a  body  of  verse  full  of 
promise,  as  well  as  evidencing  much  achieve- 


62  JOHN   MILTON 

ment  —  an  achievement  sufficient,  had  he  never 
written  another  line,  to  have  preserved  Milton's 
name  along  with  those  of  Barnfield  and  other 
minor  Elizabethans,  though  in  a  somewhat 
higher  category. 

The  elegy  on  a  "Fair  Infant"  seems  to 
I  date  from  Milton's  second  year  at  Cambridge, 
1625-26 ;  next  in  chronological  order  comes 
the  fragmentary  "  At  a  Vacation  Exercise," 
which  dates  from  1628,  the  year  before  he 
took  his  Bachelor's  degree.  He  had  been  ap- 
pointed to  deliver  a  Latin  speech  at  certain 
sportive  exercises  held  by  the  undergraduates. 
His  thesis  was  the  familiar  one  that  all  work 
and  no  play  makes  Jack  a  dull  boy,  but  he 
presented  it  under  a  much  more  decorous 
title.  He  was  assisted  by  other  students  who 
represented  fictitious  .  characters  —  on  this  spe- 
cial occasion  the  "  Predicaments "  of  Aris- 
totle. Milton,  in  spite  of  his  serious  nature, 
managed  to  play  well  his  part  of  "  Father " 
to  the  unruly  assemblage,  hence  his  speech 
contains  jocularities  and  now  unintelligible  per- 
sonal allusions.  Suddenly  he  introduced  an 
innovation ;  he  passed  from  Latin  into  English, 


WORKS  63 

apostrophizing  nobly  his  native  tongue,  and 
declaiming  solemnly  fifty  sonorous  couplets. 
Much  of  the  poem  is  dead  to  us  now  ;  but  the 
style  cannot  die,  because  it  is  prophetic  of  the 
future  master.  Even  the  undergraduates  bent 
on  fun  must  have  stood  dumb  with  pride  for 
their  brilliant  colleague  who  could  thus  sing,  — 

"  Of  kings  and  queens  and  heroes  old, 
Such  as  the  wise  Demodocus  once  told 
In  solemn  songs  at  King  Alcinous'  feast." 

But  Milton  would  not  try  their  patience,  for 
he  soon  called  up  his  "  Predicaments,"  and 
ended  with  some  lines  about  the  chief  English 
rivers  that  long  puzzled  the  critics  until  it 
was  discovered  not  many  years  ago  that  the 
dignified  poet  was  probably  punning  on  the 
names  of  two  young  freshmen,  sons  of  a  Sir 
John  Rivers. 

J  His  next  poetic  performance,  dating  from 
Christmas,  1629,  must  have  still  more  aston- 
ished his  fellow-students,  if  any  of  them  were 
permitted  to  hear  it.  The  famous  stanzas^en^, 
titled  "On  the  Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity," 
w^ich  Hallam  has  declared  to  be  an  ode, 


64  JOHN  MILTON 

"  perhaps  the  finest  in  the  English  language," 
represent  a  marked  growth  of  poetic  power 
and  an  exceptional  accomplishment  for  a  poet 
just  turned  twenty-one.  He  thought  enough 
of  it  to  give  an  excellent  description  of  it  to 
his  friend  Diodati  in  his  sixth  Latin  elegy ; 
indeed  the  original  hardly  anywhere  rises 
above  two  splendid  lines  of  the  paraphrase  : — 

"  Stelliparumque  polum,  modulantesque  aethere  turmas 
Et  subito  elisos  ad  sua  fana  deos."  l 

As  we  shall  see  from  the  fragment  on  the 
"  Passion,"  Milton  was  meditating  upon  the 
great  events  of  the  Christian  Year  arid  en- 
deavoring to  give  them  poetic  expression  of 
an  adequate  kind.  He  succeeded  so  well  at 
his  first  attempt  that  he  may  almost  be  said 
to  have  imposed  the  thought  of  his  ode  and 
himself  upon  most  reading  people  whenever 
the  glad  festival  comes  round.  Reverence  of 
spirit  and  noble  charm  of  style  had  never  be- 

1  Loosely  rendered  by  Cowper :  — 

"  The  hymning  angels  and  the  herald-star 
That  led  the  Wise,  who  sought  him  from  afar, 
And  idols  on  their  own  unhallow'd  shore 
Dash'd,  at  his  birth  to  be  revered  no  more." 


WORKS  65 

fore  been  so  harmonized  in  an  English  reli- 
gious poem,  nor  have  they,  perhaps,  been  so 
harmonized  since.  The  poet  was  rapt  away 
on  the  wings  of  his  imagination,  but  not  car- 
ried so  far  out  of  sight  as  in  much  of  his 
later  work ;  hence  his  ode  is  one  of  the  most 
comprehensible  of  his  poems  for  the  normal 
reader. 

Whether,  indeed,  it  deserves  Hallam's  high 
praise  is  another  matter.  It  has  action,  but 
not  the  dramatic  intensity  of  Dry  den's  "  Alex- 
ander's Feast";  it  has  nobility  of  thought  and 
feeling,  but  not  the  nobility  of  the  best  stanzas 
of  Wordsworth's  "  Ode  on  the  Intimations  of 
Immortality."  Besides,  being  a  regular  ode 
in  set  stanzas,  it  did  not  allow  Milton  to  attain 
the  full  harmonic  effects  of  the  more  or  less 
irregular  ode,  in  which  sound  is  married  to 
sense  in  a  manner  unparalleled  in  any  other 
form  of  lyric.  Yet,  if  it  be  not  the  greatest 
English  ode,  it  surely  deserves  more  attention 
than  Mark  Pattison  gave  it,  not  to  mention 
the  purblind  Johnson.  There  are  crudities  to 
be  discovered  in  it  beyond  doubt ;  there  are 
indications  of  a  slight  bending  toward  the 


66  JOHN   MILTON 

Fantastic  School  of  Donne;  but  these  are 
trifles  compared  with  the  charm  and  power 
that  result  from  the  blending  of  Greek  and 
Hebrew  elements  —  with  the  almost  magical 
effects  of  the  skilfully  chosen  proper  names  — 
with  the  pervading  dignity  of  style  and  the 
individual  mastery  ©f  rhythm. 

With  regard  to  the  last  point  it  will  be 
well  to  go  somewhat  into  particulars.  Not 
only  is  the  rhythm  of  such  a  stanza  as  that 
beginning 

^  Such  music  (as  'tis  said)  " 

'$ 

masterly  and  original,  but  the  stanzaic  form 
itself  is  the  invention  of  a  metrical  artist.  Its 
elements  are  not  new,  being  merely  a  "  tail- 
stave  "  and  a  couplet ;  but  the  proportions 
observed  by  the  various  lines  with  respect  to 
the  number  of  contained  syllables  are  strik- 
ingly unique.  The  short  lines  of  five  or  six 
syllables  are  balanced  against  lines  of  ten,, 
and  when  one  expects  a  uniform  couplet,  one 
is  confronted  with  a  line  of  eight  syllables 
rhyming  with  an  Alexandrine  of  twelve. 
Hence  the  resulting  stanza  gives  swiftness  of 


WORKS  67 

movement  through  its  short  lines,  abundance 
of  melody  through  its  frequent  rhymes,  and 
a  stately  dignity  through  its  protracted  and 
sonorous__close.  What  finer  combination  of 
melody  and  harmony  could  one  desire  than 
this  :  — 

"  The  lonely  mountains  o'er,  * 

And  the  resounding  shore,   » 
A  voice  of  weeping  heard  and  loud  lament  ;  ^ 

From  haunted  spring,  and  dale,  <- 

Edged  with  poplar  pale,  «• 
The  parting  Genius  is  with  sighing  sent  ;  *• 
With  flower-inwoven  tresses  torn    J- 
The  Nymphs  in  twilight  shade  of  tangled  thickets 


j  The  alliteration  discoverable  here  and  else- 
where has  induced  some  critics  to  find  the 
ode  too  artificial,  just  as  the  twenty-sixth 
stanza  about  "the  sun  in  bed,"  introducing  a 
figure  more  suitable  to  Donne,  or,  with  a  slight 
change,  to  Butler,  has  induced  them  to  dis- 
cover a  hankering  in  the  young  poet  after 
the  diseased  beauties  of  Marinism  ;  but  these 
are  trifles  when  compared  with  the  splen- 
did rhythmical  and  metrical  triumph  of  the 


68  JOHN  MILTON 

"  Hymn "   proper,  or  with  the  marvellous  dic- 
tion exhibited  in  such  verses  as 

"  And  cast  the  dark  foundations  deep, 
And  bid  the  weltering  waves  their  oozy  channel  keep." 

With  regard  to  the  four  admirable  preliminary 
/  stanzas,  Milton  can  claim  no  such  metrical  origi- 
s  /  nality  as  he  can  for  the  stanzas  of  his  "Hymn." 
They  are  precisely  the  stanzas  used  in  the 
elegy  on  the  "  Fair  Infant,"  and  are  a  mere 
modification  of  the  rhyme-royal  of  Chaucer, 
the  seventh  verse  containing  twelve  syllables 
instead  of  ten,  i.e.  being  an  Alexandrine.  This 
modification  had  been  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously made  by  Sir  Thomas  More,  in  his 
"  Lamentation "  for  Queen  Elizabeth,  wife  of 
Henry  VII.,  but  Phineas  Fletcher  was  more 
probably  the  source  that  influenced  Milton. 
He  might  easily  have  developed  it  for  him- 
self, however,  since  modifications  of  stanzas 
by  the  addition  of  an  Alexandrine  in  imitation 
of  Spenser  were  frequent  at  the  time.  But 
such  noble  use  of  any  sort  of  stanza  as  that 
made  by  Milton  was  not  common  then,  and 
never  has  been  or  will  be. 


69 

The  Easter  season  of  1630  evidently  found 
Milton  preparing  to  emulate  his  success  of 
the  preceding  Christmas.  He  began  with 
eight  introductory  stanzas  of  the  same  modi- 
fied rhyme-royal  form  ;  but  at  the  end  of 
the  eighth,  before  he  reached  the  "  Hymn  " 
proper,  he  broke  off,  appending  to  the  frag- 
ment years  later  the  following  note  :  — 

"  This  subject  the  author,  finding  to  be  above 
the  years  he  had  when  he  wrote  it,  and  nothing 
satisfied  with  what  was  begun,  left  it  unfin- 
ished." 

With  this  judgment  it  is  easy  to  agree. 
The  stanzas,  while  not  lacking  in  beauty,  are 
not  worthy  of  the  transcendent  subject.  They 
show  more  markedly  than  his  preceding  poems 
the  influence  of  hjs^favoriteSpenser,  and  they 
do  not  sEow  to  the  full  the  splendid  original 
gowers  of  whicrT  Milton  had  already  given 
such  evidence.  They  mark  also  the  limit  of  his 
yielding  to  the  fantastic  absurdities  of  Marin- 
ism,  forthere~isTitfI?lri  thepoetry  of  Quarles 
or  Sylvester  that  is  more  extravagant  than 
the  monumental  "  conceit,"  in  the  seventh 


stanza,   of    "that   sad     epulchral   rocET^   upon 


70  JOHN   MILTON 

whose  "  softened  quarry"  the  poet  "would 
score  "  his  "plaining  verse  as  lively  as  before." 
If  the  little  "Song  on  May  Morning"  dates 
from  1630,  it  more  than  atones  by  its  beauty 
for  the  failure  of  the  poem  on  the  "  Passion." 
But,  as  we  shall  see  later,  there  is  a  tendency 
among  critics  to  assign  the  undated  early 
poems  to  the  period  of  retirement  at  Horton ; 
hence  the  ten  beautiful  lines  may  not  repre- 
sent the~^jnotions  oJL_the  college  student  at 
-aUZ~THey  are  full  of  an  exquisite  feeling 
for  spring,  especially  for  its  pulsing  energy, 
which  is  well  symbolized  by  the  sudden  change 
at  the  fifth  verse  from  long  iambic  lines  to 
shorter  trochaic  ones.  Why  a  student  like 
Milton,  who  had  celebrated  the  return  of 
spring  in  Latin  elegiacs,  might  not  have  writ- 
ten this  song  after  a  walk  in  the  beautiful 
gardens  of  Trinity  is  hard  to  see ;  but  the 
critics  seem  to  write  as  if  Milton's  love  of 
nature  was  brought  out  at  Horton  alone.  Of 
this  we  shall  speak  hereafter;  it  is  sufficient 
now  to  emphasize  the  beauty  of  the  lines, 
which  is  more  elaborate,  however,  than  befits 
a  genuine  song. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE    LATIN    POEMS 

As  we  have  seen,  the  Latin  poems  formed 
a  separate  portion  of  the  volume  of  1645-46. 
They  filled  eighty-eight  pages,  divided  by  their 
author  into  two  books,  one  of  elegies  ("  Elegia- 
rum  Liber  "),  and  one  of  miscellanies  ("  Sylva- 
rum  Liber").  In  the  poem  last  written,  the 
"  Epitaphium  Damonis,"  Milton  announced  his 
intention  of  writing  thenceforward  in  English, 
a  promise  which  was  practically  kept,  since 
nothing  but  the  "  Ode  to  Rous "  and  a  few 
epigrams  were  subsequently  added  to  the  col- 
lection. Of  the  seven  elegies,  eight  epigrams, 
and  nine  miscellaneous  pieces  (excluding  the 
three  Greek  poems)  printed  in  1645,  twelve 
were  written  at  Cambridge,  one  apparently  at 
Horton,  and  the  rest  during  or  shortly  after 
the  Italian  journey.  The  whole  is  therefore 
the  work  of  a  young  man,  and  a  considerable 
7' 


72  JOHN   MILTON 

portion  that  of  a  mere  youth.  Judged  from 
this  point  of  view,  it  is  a  wonderful  achieve- 
ment. 

With  regard  to  the  intrinsic  merits  of  the 
verses,  there  is  almost  complete  unanimity 
among  the  most  qualified  critics.  With  the 
exception  of  Landor,  who  wrote  more  as  a 
Roman,  to  whom  Latin  seemed,  in  the  words 
of  Dr.  Garnett,  to  come  "  like  the  language  of 
some  prior  state  of  existence,  rather  remem- 
bered than  learned,"  Milton  is  the  greatest 
English  writer  of  Latin  verse.  This  may 
seem  to  be  aT~cTubious  Compliment  in  an  age 
when  even  the  veritable  classics  are  often 
disparaged ;  but  it  would  not  have  been  such 
to  Milton  and  his  contemporaries,  and  it  must 
mean  something  in  any  careful  estimate  of  his 
work.  He  is  the  greater  man  and  poet  for 
having  succeeded  so  well  in  his  Latin  verses, 
even  if  we  believe  with  Dr.  Garnett  that  he 
won  his  success  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow  — 
a  point  that  does  not  seem  to  be  irrevocably 
settled. 

Authorities  are  agreed  that  Milton  always 
attained  scholarly  elegance,  and  that  he  did 


WORKS  73 

not  lose  his  own  individuality  as  is  so  often 
the  case  with  writers  who  attempt  to  use  a 
language  not  native  to  them.  That  he  suc- 
ceeded in  writing  great  poems  is  hardly  as- 
serted, save  with  regard  to  the  "  Epitaphium 
Damonis,"  of  the  nobility  and  beauty  of  which 
there  has  been  no  serious  doubt.  Difference 
of  opinion  has  revealed  itself  as  to  what  author 
Milton  followed  most  closely,  Warton,  a  goocL 
judge,  believing  that  he  imitated  Ovid  with 
consistency,  Hallam  maintaining  that  his  liex-_ 
ameters  at  least  are  more  Virgilian.  It  is 
safer,  perhaps,  to  side  with  Warton.  It  is  safe, 
too,  to  agree  with  Dr.  Johnson  and  with  Dr. 
Garnett  that,  in  the  words  of  the  former,  neither 
"  power  of  invention  "  nor  "  vigor  of  sentiment  " 
are  so  conspicuous  as  "  the  purity  of  the 
diction  and  the  harmony  of  the  numbers " ; 
but  on  this  point  something  needs  to  be  said 
by  way  of  explanation. 

Milton's  diction  is  pure  on  the  whole,  but 
it  is  easy  to  establish  trie  tact  that  he  "Uses 
quiteanumber  of  ante-_and  post-classical  words  ; 
more,  seemingly,  of  the  former  than  of  the 
latter.  His  excessive  and  sometimes  inaccu- 


74  JOHN    MILTON 

rate  use  of  "  que  "  is  also  to  be  noticed  I1  Har- 
monious his  verses  certainly  are  when  he  is 
using  the  elegiac  couplet ;  but  it  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  vigor  is  not  rather  the  chief 
characteristic  of  his  hexameters.  Again,  it  is 
a  mistake  to  suppose  that  there  are  no  remark- 
ably poetic  passages  to  be  found  outside  the 
"  Epitaphium  Damonis "  and  the  two  elegies 
(i.,  vi.)  to  Diodati,  as  might  be  inferred  from  the 
prominence  given  these  poems.  Such  are  to 
be  found  even  outside  the  lines  "  Ad  Patrem  " 
and  the  tribute  to  Manso,  which  some  modern 
critics  praise.  The  close  of  the  fourth  elegy 
to  Thomas  Young,  Milton's  tutor,  is  full  of 
sonorous  energy ;  there  is  a  fine  lift  in  the  early 
verses  on  the  "  Return  of  Spring  " ;  and  there 
is  probably  more  sheer  dramatic  power  in  the 


1  In  an  interesting  letter  my  friend  Professor  Charles  W.  Bain 
of  South  Carolina  College  informs  me  that  Ovid  seems  to  have 
had  a  preponderant  influence  on  Milton's  diction,  also  that  the 
latter  uses  an  excess  of  purely  poetic  words  as  well  as  quite  a 
number  rendered  classical  only  by  a  single  use  on  the  part  of 
Ovid  or  Virgil.  Mr.  Bain  thinks  Milton's  versification  remark- 
ably good,  but  his  trained  ear  supports  my  untrained  one  in 
Hnding  not  a  few  verses  rendered  unpleasant  by  a  superfluity  of 
elided  syllables. 


WORKS  75 


strong  hexameters  on  Guy  Fawkes's  Day 
("In  Quintum  Novembris"),  written  when  Mil- 
ton was  not  quite  eighteen,  than  is  to  be  found 
in  the  rest  of  his  Latin  verse,  or  indeed  in  the 
poetry  of  any  other  poet  of  equal  age.  There 
is  strong  work,  too,  in  both  the  academical  exer- 
cises included  in  the  "  Sylvarum  Liber."  In 
short,  while  the  Milton  of  the  Latin  poems 
is  plainly  more  graceful  than  sublime,  he  is  just 
as  plainly  a  Milton  destined  to  grow  greater 
with  the  years. 

There  is  little  need  in  a  study  like  the  present 
to  dwell  at  length  on  special  poems.  The  ele- 
gies on  the  Bishops  of  Ely  and  Winchester, 
on  the  Cambridge  beadle  and  vice-chancellor, 
and  on  Diodati  will  occupy  us  in  a  later  chapter. 
None  of  the  epigrams  can  be  called  great,  or 
even  fine,  although  some  are  good ;  and  the 
irregular  ode  to  John  Rous,_  the  librarian  at 
Oxford,  who  had  lost  his  copy  of  the  edition 
of  the  "  Minor  Poems"  of  1645  and  desired  an- 
other, is  interesting  chiefly  j.s  a  metrical  ex- 
periment. The  two  Greek  epigrams  and  the 
paraphrase  of  Psalm  cxiv.  are  not  remarkable, 
and  the  scazons  to  the  ailing  Roman,  Giovanni 


76  JOHN   MILTON 

Salzilli,  who  had  praised  Milton  so  extrava- 
gantly, are  little  more  than  graceful.  But  the 
elegies  to  Diodati  —  really  friendly  letters  in 
verse  —  are  excellent  of  their  kind,  the  later 
written  being  notable  for  its  fine  expression 
of  that  cardinal  doctrine  of  Milton's  faith, 
afterward  so  nobly  presented  in  "  Comus  "  and 
in  a  memorable  prose  passage,  —  that  he  who 
wouldjwrite  a  Jrue  poem  must  live  a  pure  life. 
The  elegy  or  letter  to  Young  is  fulTof 
'affection,  and  the  Hnes  on  the^dyent 
haye  a  distinct  charm.  The  seventh  elegy  inis 
interesting~Irom  its  somewhat  conventional 


graphic  description  of  the  effect  upon  the  young  ^ 
jjoet  of  a  pretty  face  flashing  upon  him  in  a. 
LonHorTstreet,  BTfFlHmedfately  disappearing  in 
the  crowd.  Later,  Milton  appended  some  lines 
of  apology  for  his  youthful  enthusiasm,  but 
they  were  not  needed  ;  the  occurrence  described 
was  evidently  a  rare  one. 

The  "  Sylvarum  Liber  "  adds  more  to  Milton's 
fame  than  the  technical  elegies  do.  The 
"  In  Quintum  Novembris  "  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
a  memorable  poem,  even  if  it  ends  flatly.  The 
description  of  Satan  arousing  the  Pope  to  send 


WORKS  77 

his  emissaries  to  England  is  very  vivid,  and 
ought  to  be  read  in  Professor  Masson's  hex- 
ameters, since  the  gentle  Cowper  was  too 
squeamish  to  translate  it,  and  the  high-church 
Johnson  to  praise  it.  The  academical  exercises, 
especially  that  on  Aristotle's  view  of  Plato's 
philosophy,  show  how  Milton  could  clothe  with 
life  even  the  dry  bones  of  metaphysics,  just 
as  he  afterward  clothed  those  of  theology. 
The  lines  to  his  father  are  not  onj^^.  fine  filial 
tribute,  but  are^ggjgsdid^^^biograpm'cal  de- 
f ence^pj[  the  right  of  genius  to  careful  culture 
and  to  exemption  frorrTall  sordicTmcentiveT  to 
self-exertion.  It  is  as  noble  a  document  as  can 
be  found  in  the  annals  of  human  intercourse, 
and  should  be  studied  by  all  who  know  Latin. 
Almost  as  much  can  be  said  of  the  "  Mansus," 
the  admirable  tribute  to  that  Marquis  Manso 
who  has  the  unique  distinction,  denied  even 
to  Maecenas,  of  being  the  friend  of  two  great 
epic  poets  of  different  tongues,  Tasso  and 
Milton.  The  aged  Neapolitan  has  his  name 
enshrined  in  Tasso's  verses,  but  he  has  as  sure 
a  title  to  fame  in  Milton's  tribute.  The  Eng- 
lish reader  may  indeed  bear  away  from  the 


78  JOHN    MILTON 

poem  a  deep  regret  that  Milton  never  carried 
out  his  expressed  purpose  of  writing  an  epic 
on  King  Arthur,  but  he  will  always  remem- 
ber with  pleasure  the  hale  and  hearty  friend 
of  genius  —  the  Diis  dilecte  senex.  He  will 
pass  on,  too,  to  read  the  beautiful  description 
of  Manso's  goblets  in  the  "  Epitaphium  Damo- 
nis,"  and  having  finished  the  two  noble  poems, 
he  will  ever  after  find  it  impossible  to  speak 
of  Milton's  Latin  verses  without  affection  mixed 
with  wonder. 


CHAPTER   III 

"  L'ALLEGRO  "  AND  "  IL  PENSEROSO  " 

THE  genesis  of  "  L' Allegro"  and  "II  Pen- 
seroso,"  perhaps  the  best  known  and  most 
heartily  admired  of  all  Milton's  compositions, 
is  involved  in  considerable  obscurity.  They 
were  not  printed  before  1645,  and  they  do  not 
exist  for  us  in  the  celebrated  bound  volume  of 
Milton's  Mss.  in  the  library  of  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  which  contains  the  drafts  of  all 
the  English  poems  written  between  1633,  prob- 
ably, and  1645  >  we  are  therefore  compelled,  in 
the  absence  of  other  data,  to  rely  upon  infer- 
ences and  internal  evidence  in  determining 
their  time  and  place  of  writing.  The  consen- 
sus of  critical  opinion  gives  1632-33  as  the 
time,  and  Horton  as  the  place.  Professor 
Masson  assigns  them  to  tfifc-  latter  half  of 
1632.  There  are,  however,  reasons  to  make 
one  think  that  they  should  probably  be  placed 
earlier.  The  autumn  of  1632  seems  to  be 
79 


80  JOHN    MILTON 

selected  because  Horton  is  usually  assumed  as 
the  place  of  composition,  and  Milton  went  to 
reside  there  in  July,  1632.  He  would  natu- 
rally, argue  the  critics,  be  so  impressed  with 
the  charms  of  the  spot  that  he  would  turn  to 
verse,  and  "  L' Allegro  "  and  "  II  Penseroso," 
and  the  "  Song  on  May  Morning,"  which  we 
have  assigned  to  the  Cambridge  period,  would 
be  the  outcome.  But  there  is  no  proof  that 
the  poems  were  not  written  at  Cambridge  or 
in  London  as  reminiscential  tributes  to  the 
pleasures  of  a  vacation  spent  in  the  country ; 
and. we  know  from  a  Latin  prolusion  or  ora- 
tion delivered,  Masson  thinks,  either  in  the 
latter  half  of  1631  or  the  first  part  of  1632, 
that  Milton  spent  "  the  last  past  summer 
.  .  .  amid  rural  scenes  and  sequestered 
glades,"  and  that  he  recalled  "the  supreme 
delight  he  had  with  the  Muses."  This  vaca- 
tion of  1631  may  have  been  spent  at  Horton, 
for  there  is  no  proof  that  the  elder  Milton 
had  not  then  acquired  that  property,  and  the 
young  poet  may  have  written  his  poems  under 
the  elms  that  so  fascinated  him,  or  have  com- 
posed them  on  his.  return  to  college. 


WORKS  8 I 

I  incline  to  the  former  supposition.  As  we 
shall  see,  he  was  unquestionably  supplied  with 
hints  for  both  his  poems  by  Burton's  "Anat- 
omy," surely  a  likely  book  for  such  a  student 
as  Milton  to  take  with  him  on  a  vacation. 
Again,  no  one  can  read  the  "  Prolusion  on 
Early  Rising,"  almost  certainly  Milton's,  with- 
out thinking  that  much  of  the  raw  material  of 
the  two  poems  was  in  his  brain  and  being  ex- 
pressed during  his  university  life ;  nor  can 
one  read  the  other  prolusions  without  seeing 
that  Orpheus,  the  music  of  the  spheres,  and 
Platonism  were  much  in  his  thoughts.  Be- 
sides, about  1630,  the  date  of  the  "  Epitaph 
on  Shakspere,"  Milton  was  evidently  to  some 
extent  occupied  with  his  great  forerunner, 
whose  genius  is  honored  in  the  poems,  and  a 
year  later  he  was  experimenting  with  the 
octosyllabic  couplet  in  the  "  Epitaph  on  the 
Marchioness  of  Winchester."  Finally,  it  was 
about  this  time  that  he  was  seriously  weigh- 
ing the  reasons  pro  and  con  with  regard  to  his 
choice  of  a  profession,  and  it  might  naturally 
occur  to  him  to  contrast  in  poetic  form  the 
pleasures  of  the  more  or  less  worldly  and  the 
G 


82  JOHN   MILTON 

more  or  less  secluded,  studious,  and  devoted 
life.  He  had  made  his  choice  by  the  autumn 
of  1632,  and  had  therefore  less  cause  for  such 
poetical  expression. 

A  minute  analysis  of  the  style  and  metre  of 
the  poems  tends  to  confirm  the  view  expressed 
above.  It  is  obviously  a  transitional  style 
when  compared  with  that  of  the  "  Nativity 
Ode,"  and  other  earlier  pieces.  Scriptural 
ideas  and  subjects  are  occupying  his  mind 
less,  and  he  has  progressed  toward  a  freer 
handling  of  his  themes.  He  has  become  in- 
terested in  contemporary  English  poetry,  and 
while  showing  the  influence  of  the  classics, 
is  not  mastered  by  them.  All  this  would  indi- 
cate that  the  poems  were  written  after  1631, 
though,  as  we  have  just  seen,  it  is  not  unlikely 
that  having  in  that  year  handled  the  octo- 
syllabic couplet  successfully,  he  should  shortly 
be  tempted  to  try  it  again.  We  thus  have 
1631  as  a  terminus  a  quo;  1633-1634,  the 
years  of  "  Arcades "  and  "  Comus,"  are  a  ter- 
minus ad  quem  for  the  following  strictly  metri- 
cal reasons.  The  lyrical  portions  of  "Arcades" 
and  "  Comus "  appear  to  be  less  spontaneous 


WORKS  83 

and  more  mature  than  "  L'  Allegro "  and  its 
companion  poem.  The  metrical  art  displayed 
is  more  elaborate  and  self-conscious,  and  when 
one  looks  closer,  as,  for  example,  when  one 
compares  the  invocation  to  Mirth  in  "  L' Alle- 
gro "  with  the  similar  passage  in  "  Comus  " 
(11.  102-122),  one  is  struck  with  the  fact  that 
the  verses  of  the  anti-masque  have  lost  the 
blithe  sensuousness  of  the  former  poem,  that 
thought  is  struggling  with  feeling,  and  that 
the  lyric  style  of  the  poet  is  approaching  its 
culmination  in  the  elaborate  and  highly  sus- 
tained  art  that  has  made  "  Lycidas  "  matchless. 
We  conclude,  therefore,  that  "  L' Allegro  "  and 
"  II  Penseroso"  are  nearer  to  the  "  Epitaph  on 
the  Marchioness  of  Winchester"  than  they  are 
to  " Arcades";  and  if  any  one  should  argue 
that  the  mature  sentiment  of  the  poems  and 
their  vigorous  expression  indicate  a  later,  not 
an  earlier,  date,  it  must  suffice  to  reply  that 
youth  takes  itself  more  seriously  than  age,  and 
that  there  is  no  sentiment  or  thought  in  either 
poem  that  Milton  might  not  well  have  had  as 
a  student  at  Cambridge. 

It  has  been  stated  already  that  Milton  was 


84  JOHN  MILTON 

indebted  for  hints,  if  not  for  direct  suggestion, 
to  Burton's  "Anatomy  of  Melancholy."  This 
famous  book,  the  first  edition  of  which  ap- 
peared in  1621,  was  prefaced  by  a  poem  en- 
titled "The  Author's  Abstract  of  Melancholy, 
AtaXo7&>?,"  in  which  "  Democritus  Junior" 
analyzes  his  feelings  in  a  way  that  fore- 
shadows Milton's  subsequent  procedure.  There 
are  twelve  stanzas  of  eight  lines  each,  the  last 
two  verses  of  each  stanza  constituting  a. vari- 
able refrain,  the  measure  being,  however,  the 
octosyllabic  couplet.  In  one  stanza  the  pleas- 
ures of  a  meditative  man  are  given  in  a  series 
of  little  pictures,  while  the  next  stanza  presents 
the  woes  of  the  same  personage  when  a  fit  of 
real  melancholy  is  upon  him.  Milton  could 
not  have  failed  to  be  struck  with  the  general 
effectiveness  of  the  idea  and  its  development, 
but  his  artist's  instinct  told  him  that  this  effec- 
tiveness would  be  enhanced  if,  instead  of  a 
dialogue  in  stanzas,  he  should  write  two  dis- 
tinct but  companion  poems,  developed  on 
parallel  lines,  in  which  the  pleasures  of  a 
typically  cheerful  and  a  typically  serious,  man 
should  be  described  in  pictures  slightly  more 


WORKS  85 

elaborate  than  those  of  Burton.  He  aban- 
doned the  too  glaring  contrast  of  joys  and 
woes,  and  succeeded  also  in  avoiding  the  occa- 
sional dropping  into  commonplace  that  mars 
the  "Abstract  of  Melancholy."  But  some 
pictures  and  even  lines  and  phrases  of  the 
elder  poem  probably  remained  in  his  memory. 
Another  poem  which  may  have  influenced 
Milton  is  the  song,  "  Hence,  all  you  vain  de- 
lights," in  Fletcher's  play,  "  The  Nice  Valour." 
This  play  was  not  published  until  1647,  but  it 
had  been  acted  long  before,  and  the  song  had 
almost  certainly  become  known  before  "  II 
Penseroso "  was  written.  Tradition  assigns 
the  lyric  to  Beaumont,  but  Mr.  Bullen  with 
more  probability  gives  it  to  Fletcher.  It  is 
an  exquisite  expansion  of  the  theme  expressed 
in  its  closing  verse,  "  Nothing's  so  dainty-sweet 
as  lovely  melancholy,"  and  it  is  pleasant  to 
believe  that  it  may  have  given  Milton  a  hint, 
although  it  can  scarcely  have  had  as  much 
influence  upon  his  verses  as  his  own  two 
poems  plainly  had  upon  a  stanza  of  Collins's 
"  The  Passions."  There  are  naturally  traces 
of  other  poets  to  be  found  in  these  produc- 


86  JOHN   MILTON 

tions  of  Milton's  impressionable  period,  par- 
ticularly of  Joshua  Sylvester,  and  to  a  less 
degree  of  Spenser,  Browne,  and  Marlowe. 
Collins,  too,  was  not  the  only  eighteenth-cen- 
tury poet  who  had  "  L' Allegro  "  and  "  II  Pen- 
seroso "  ringing  through  his  head,  as  any  one 
may  see  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  examine 
Dodsley's  well-known  collection.  Even  Pope 
was  not  above  borrowing  epithets  from  them, 
and  Dyer's  best  poem,  "  Grongar  Hill,"  would 
not  have  had  its  being  without  them.  Mat- 
thew Green,  Thomas  Warton,  John  Hughes, 
who  actually  wrote  a  new  conclusion  for  "  II 
Penseroso,"  and  other  minor  verse-writers  were 
much  affected  by  them,  and  Gray  borrowed 
from  them  with  the  open  boldness  that  always 
marks  the  appropriations  of  a  true  poet.  But 
perhaps  the  best  proof  of  their  popularity 
during  a  century  which  is  too  sweepingly 
charged  with  inability  to  appreciate  real 
poetry,  is  the  fact  that  Handel  set  them  to 
music.  In  our  own  century  they  have  never 
lacked  admirers,  or  failed  to  exert  upon  poets 
an  easily  detected  influence.  It  may  even  be 
held  with  some  show  of  reason  that  their 


WORKS  87 

popularity,  leading  to  a  fuller  knowledge  of 
Milton,  paved  the  way  for  the  remarkable 
renascence  of  Spenser  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
eighteenth  and  the  first  part  of  the  present 
century. 

As  their  Italian  titles  imply,  the  subjects 
or  speakers  of  Milton's  verses  are  The  Cheer- 
ful Man  and  The  Thoughtful  (Meditative) 
Man  respectively.  Our  English  adjectives  do 
not  quite  adequately  render  the  Italian  they 
are  intended  to  translate,  which  is  perhaps 
the  reason  why  Milton  went  abroad  for  his 
titles,  since  he  had  a  striking  warning  before 
him  in  Burton's  "Abstract"  of  the  ambiguity 
attaching  to  such  a  word  as  "  melancholy," 
which  he  might  have  used  with  one  of  his 
poems  without  exciting  surprise.  He  has  ex- 
cited surprise  with  some  modern  critics  through 
the  fact  that  he  wrote  Penseroso  instead  of 
Pensieroso,  but  it  has  been  seemingly  shown 
that  the  form  he  used  was  correct  and  current 
when  he  wrote.  His  Italian  titles,  however, 
have  not  prevented  much  discussion  as  to  the 
characters  he  intended  to  portray.  Critics 
are  quite  unanimously  of  the  opinion  that  II 


88  JOHN  MILTON 

Penseroso  represents  a  man  very  like  the 
Milton  we  know,  but  they  are  divided  as  to 
the  kind  of  man  typified  by  L' Allegro.  One 
editor,  Mr.  Verity,  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that 
Milton  "must  have  felt  that  the  character  of 
L' Allegro  might,  with  slight  changes  or  addi- 
tions, be  made  to  typify  the  careless,  pleasure- 
seeking  spirit  of  the  Cavaliers  and  Court;  the 
spirit  which  he  afterward  figured  in  Comus 
and  his  followers,  and  condemned  to  destruc- 
tion." If  this  view- be  correct,  one  is  forced 
to  conclude  that  Milton  had  more  of  the  true 
dramatist's  power  of  creating  characters  other 
than  himself  than  he  has  generally  been  sup- 
posed to  possess;  and  it  requires  us  to  con- 
ceive the  more  sprightly  poem  as  forming  a 
hard  mechanical  contrast  to  its  companion, 
which  is  the  reverse  of  poetical.  On  the 
other  hand,  Dr.  Garnett  maintains  that  the 
two  poems  "are  complementary  rather  than 
contrary,  and  may  be,  in  a  sense,  regarded  as 
one  poem,  whose  theme  is  the  praise  of  the 
reasonable  life,"  It  is  easy  to  agree  with 
this  view,  especially  as  Burton's  poem  ob- 
viously suggested  the  idea  of  contrasting  two 


OFTHK  ' 

UNIVERSITY 
C* 


well-marked  moods  of  one  individual  character, 
rather  than  that  of  bringing  into  juxtaposition 
two  radically  different  characters.  L'  Allegro 
may  not  be  the  Milton  who  meditated  enter- 
ing the  Church  and  making  his  life  a  true 
poem,  but  he  is  rather  the  Milton  who  went 
to  the  theatre  in  his  youth,  and  could  in  his 
mature  age  ask  Lawrence 

"  What  neat  repast  shall  feast  us,  light  and  choice, 
Of  Attic  taste  with  wine,  whence  we  may  rise 
To  hear  the  lute  well  touched  or  artful  voice 
Warble  immortal  notes  and  Tuscan  air?  " 

than  the  typical  Cavalier  of  Charles's  court. 
Cavaliers  did  not  usually  call  for  "sweet  Lib- 
erty" but  for  sweet  License,  nor  did  they 
greatly  hanker  after  "unreproved  pleasures." 
They  were  not  particularly  noted  for  their 
early  rising  ;  and  if  any  one  of  them  had 
watched  the  Bear  out,  in  different  pursuits 
from  those  of  II  Penseroso,  he  would  probably 
not  have  continued  his  morning  walk  after 
encountering  the  "  milk  maid  singing  blithe." 
Another  point  on  which  critics  differ  is, 
whether  or  not  Milton  intended  to  describe 
the  events  of  a  day  of  twenty-four  hours. 


QO  JOHN   MILTON 

Some  claim  that  he  merely  sketches  the  gen- 
eral tenor  of  the  life  of  his  characters ;  others 
that  he  represents  the  events  of  an  ideal  day. 
The  antagonists  ought  to  be  satisfied  with  the 
assurance  that  he  intended  to  do  both  the  one 
tiling  and  thejOthejr^The  careful  and  sequen- 
tial division  of  the  day  that  is  apparent  in  each 
poem  (even  if  "  II  Penseroso  "  does  begin  with 
the  nightingale  and  the  moon)  cannot  be  acci- 
dental, nor  can  the  grouping  of  events  and  natu- 
ral sights  belonging  to  different  seasons  of  the 
year  be  the  result  of  ignorance  or  negligence. 
It  is,  probably,  a  fad  of  criticism  to  call  as 
much  attention  as  is  now  done  to  the  fact  that 
Milton  was  not  so  accurate  or  so  penetrating 
an  observer  of  nature  as  some  of  his  succes- 
sors, like  Tennyson,  have  been.  In  the  first 
place,  neither  here  nor  in  "  Paradise  Lost " 
will  Milton  be  found  to  be  much  of  a  sinner 
in  this  regard  if  he  be  compared  with  his 
predecessors  and  contemporaries.  In  the  sec- 
ond place,  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that 
minute  and  accurate  observation  of  nature  is 
essential  to  the  equipment  of  a  great  poet.  A 
genuine  love  of  nature,  a  power  to  feel  and 


WORKS  QI 

impart  something  of  her  spirit,  is  doubtless 
essential ;  but  as  poetry  on  its  pictorial  side 
should  be  mainly  suggestive,  it  is  not  yet 
clear  that  posterity  will  get  more  pleasure  out 
of  the  elaborate  and  accurate  pictures  of  some 
modern  poets  than  out  of  the  broadly  true  and 
suggestive,  if  sometimes  inaccurate,  pictures  of 
Milton.  It  is  not  entirely  unlikely  that  our 
recently  developed  love  of  detail-work  has 
injured  our  sense  for  form,  and  that  our 
grandchildren  will  take  Matthew  Arnold's  ad- 
vice and  return  to  the  Greeks  —  and  Milton,  in 
order  to  learn  what  the  highest  poetry  really 
is  like.  ;  Milton  is  nearer  akin  to  Homer  and 
Sophocles  than  he  is  to  the  modern  naturalist 
or  nature  mystic,  and  it  is  well  for  English 
poetry  that  he  isy  He  would  probably  have 
thought  the  picture  of  the  sunbeams  lying  in 
the  golden  chamber,  suggested  by  a  few  words 
in  that  exquisite  fragment  of  Mimnermus  be- 
ginning "  Attract)  7rd\i,v,"  more  in  keeping  with 
the  requirements  of  a  rational  poetics  than  nine- 
tenths  of  the  purple  descriptive  passages  in 
English  poetry  since  the  days  of  Wordsworth. 
Yet  if  editors  and  critics  have  had  their 


Q2  JOHN   MILTON 

humors  and  fads,  they  have  always  ended  by 
acknowledging  the  perennial  charm  of  these 
poems.  And  the  mass  of  readers  has  paid  its 
highest  tribute  of  culling  many  a  phrase  and 
verse  for  quotation  to  please  the  outer  or  the 
inner  ear.  The  anthologist  of  our  lyric  poetry 
who  should  omit  them  from  his  collection  would 
pay  dearly  for  his  indiscretion,  and  yet  he  could 
argue  fairly  that  they  are  rather  idylls  than 
true  lyrics,  as  Wordsworth  did  long  since.  But 
if  they  are,  in  fact,  a  series  of  little  pictures, 
sometimes  so  loosely  joined  or  so  hastily 
sketched  as  to  puzzle  the  careful  critic,1  these 
have  been  so  fused  into  one  organic  whole  by 
the  delicate,  evanescent  sentiment  that  pervades 
each  poem  that  even  the  purist  will  be  willing 
to  admit  them  to  be  lyrics  of  marvellousjaeauty 
and  power^  coming  from  the  heart  of  the  poet 
and  going  straight  to  the  hearts  of  his  readers. 

With  Milton's  most  popular  poems  it  is  con- 
venient to  group  three  short  pieces  that  are 
little  known.  They  are  those  entitled  "  At  a 

1  There  are  three  or  four  passages  in  the  poems  rendered 
very  obscure  by  a  looseness  of  syntax  unusual  with  Milton.  See 
"  L' Allegro,"  11.  45-48,  103-106,  and  "  II  Penseroso,"  11.  147-150. 


WORKS  93 

Solemn  Music,"  "  On  Time,"  and  "Upon  the 
Circumcision."  The  end  of  1633  and  the  be- 
ginning of  1634  may  be  assigned  as  the  proba- 
ble period  of  composition,  for  reasons  that  need 
not  be  detailed  here.  The_Jirst  poem  j>eemg_ 
r^ejnjniscential  of  a  sacred  concert,  the  second 


was  intended  as  an  inscription  for~lPcTock-face, 


the  thirdforms,  with  the  "  Nativity 
the  stanzas  on  "The  Passioji,^__aL_somgwhat 
belated  member  of  a  religious  trilogy.  All 
three  pieces  are  very  elaborate  in  style  and  are 
nearer  to  "  Arcades,"  "  Comus,"  and  "  Lycidas  " 
than  to  "L'  Allegro"  and  "II  Penseroso."  All 
are  full  of  high  solemnity  and  of  that  mighty 
vision  of  eternal  things  that  makes  "  Paradise 
Lost"  so  supreme  in  the  world's  poetry.  The 
following~lines  fromthe  first  will  illustrate  the 
quajityoTtlie  trio  better  than  any  description  :  — 

"  Where  the  bright  Seraphim  in  burning  row 
Their  loud  uplifted  angel-trumpets  blow, 
And  the  Cherubic  host  in  thousand  quires 
Touch  their  immortal  harps  of  golden  wires 
With  those  just  spirits  that  wear  victorious  palms, 
Hymns  devout  and  holy  songs 
Singing  everlastingly." 


94  JOHN   MILTON 

Such  poetry  ought  to  be  better  known  for  its 
intrinsic  merits,  but  students  of  Milton  should 
examine  each  of  the  poems  carefully  on  account 
of  the  light  it  throws  on  the  progress  of  Mil- 
ton's metrical  art.  As  Professor  Masson  has 
observed,  they  are  proof  that  the  poet  was  at 
"~  this  Hmeengaged  in  making  metrical  experi- 
"meMs!  The  first  two  are  a  mixtunTot  couplets 
and  quatrains  with  one  displaced  rhyme ;  the 
last  consists  of  two  fourteen-lined  stanzas  that 
correspond  with  one  another,  but  are  exceed- 
ingly irregular  in  their  internal '  structure.  The 
most  important  point,  however,  is  that  in  all 
three  there  is  a  combination  of  short  and  long 
fines  thaT~""poirils  foi  waTctnto  "  L/ycidas/1  "ami 
proves  that  Milton"  was  varying_the  metncat^ 
experiments  he  had  been  making  from  hisear- 
liest  youth.  As  late  as  "  L' Allegro  "  and  "  fT> 
Penseroso,"  in  which  he  had  experimented  with 
a  combination  of  trimeters  and  pentameters  as 
a  fitting  proem  for  the  lighter  octosyllabics  that 
were  to  follow^  his  experiments  were  mainly, 
if  not  entirely,  along  English  lines ;  after  his 
residence  at  Horton  had  increased  his  reading 
of  the  Italian  poets,  his  verse  began  to  show 


WORKS  95 

their  influence,  except  in  "  Comus  "  and  "Ar- 
cades," for  which  he  had  better  models  nearer 
home,  although  even  in  the  former  it  may  be 
perhaps  detected.  This  is,  of  course,  quite  a 
technical  matter,  but  it  throws  light  upon  Mil- 
ton's bold  yet  painstaking  character  as  an  artist, 
and  it  may  be  used  as  a  partial  test  in  determin- 
ing the  dates  of  his  unassigned  compositions. 


CHAPTER   IV 

"ARCADES"  AND  "COMUS" 

MILTON  had  had  some  little  experience  in 
writing  masques  before  he  reached  in  "Comus" 
the  supreme  success  possible  in  this  form  of 
composition,  and  he  must  have  seen  and  read 
not  a  few.  Although  we  cannot  determine 
the  exact  date  of  '(Arcades,"  it  is  reasonably 
certain  that  it  preceded  "  Comus,"  and  that 
it  may  be  assigned  to  1633.  It  formed  only 
"  part  of  an  entertainment  presented  to  the 
Countess  Dowager  of  Derby  at  Harefield," 
but  we  may  be  sure  that  it  was  a  part  as 
important  as  it  was  beautiful,  and  that  the 
poet's  'prentice  hand  was  strengthened  by 
writing  it.  He  seems  to  have  been  induced 
thus  to  honor  a  lady  whose  praises  Spenser 
had  previously  sung  by  the  well-known  musi- 
cian, Henry  Lawes,  to  whom  he  afterward 
dedicated  a  fine  sonnet.  Lawes  (1595-1662) 
96 


WORKS  97 

was  the  chief  English  composer  of  his  time, 
and  must  have  known  the  Milton  family  for 
some  years.  His  talents  won  him  a  position 
at  court,  and  the  friendship  of  the  leading 
poets  of  the  time,  whose  songs  he  set  to  music, 
receiving  in  return  their  poetical  encomiums. 
He  probably  gained  more  money,  however, 
by  furnishing  music  for  the  then  fashionable 
masques,  so  we  find  him  collaborating  in  the 
performance  of  Shirley's  "  Triumph  of  Peace," 
and  composing  single-handed  the  music  of 
Carew's  "  Ccelum  Britannicum."  He  was  also 
music  tutor  to  the  children  of  the  Earl  and 
Countess  of  Bridgewater,  which  seems  to  ex- 
plain his  assumed  connection  with  "Arcades." 
These  children  would  take  part  in  the  proposed 
entertainment  to  their  grandmother,  and  would 
ask  their  instructor's  help.  He,  knowing  Mil- 
ton well,  would  apply  to  him  for  the  necessary 
verses,  rather  than  to  professional  masque- 
writers,  who  would  probably  not  care  to  under- 
take such  a  slight  piece  of  work.  Milton's 
success  was  so  conspicuous  that  when  another 
and  more  elaborate  entertainment  was  contem- 
plated by  the  Bridgewater  family,  Lawes  would 


98  JOHN   MILTON 

again  apply  to  him  for  poetical  assistance. 
This  is  a  simple,  if  meagre,  account  of  the  way 
the  young  Puritan  poet  was  enlisted  in  the 
service  of  the  distinguished  Cavalier  family, 
for  Warton's  statement  that  Milton's  father 
was  the  Earl's  tenant  at  Horton  has  not  been 
substantiated. 

With  regard  to  the  poetical  merits  of 
"Arcades"  there  can  scarcely  be  two  opinions. 
The  speech  of  the  Genius  of  the  Wood,  in 
heroic  couplets,  is  a  triumph  of  style,  and  the 
three  songs  have  a  lightness  of  touch  that  is 
rare  in  Milton's  lyric  work.  The  compliments 
that  had  to  be  paid  the  Dowager  are  turned 
with  as  much  grace  as  if  the  Puritan  had  been 
an  Elizabethan  of  the  prime.  Indeed  Shak- 
spere  himself  has  hardly  surpassed  the  exqui- 
site song  beginning 

"  O'er  the  smooth  enamelled  green," 

while  he  surely  would  have  praised,  though 
he  need  not  have  envied,  such  a  divinely  har- 
monious passage  as  the  following :  — 

"  But  else  in  deep  of  night,  when  drowsiness 
Hath  locked  up  mortal  sense,  then  listen  I 


WORKS  99 

To  the  celestial  Sirens1  harmony, 

That  sit  upon  the  nine  infolded  spheres, 

And  sing  to  those  that  hold  the  vital  shears, 

And  turn  the  adamantine  spindle  round 

On  which  the  fate  of  Gods  and  men  is  wound.1' 

The  occasion  of  the  more  elaborate  celebra- 
tion that  led  to  the  creation  of  "  Comus  "  was 
the  formal  entrance  of  the  Earl  of  Bridgewater 
upon  his  duties  as  Lord  President  of  Wales 
in  the  autumn  of  1634,  at  his  official  residence, 
Ludlow  Castle,  in  Shropshire.  Here  there 
was  quite  a  gathering  of  relatives  and  friends 
who  would  naturally  think  a  masque  to  be 
peculiarly  suitable  to  such  a  semi-royal  func- 
tion, especially  as  the  three  eldest  children  of 
the  Earl1 JLord,  Brackley,  Mr.  Thomas  Egerton, 
and  Lady  Alice  Egerton,  had  already  acted 
in  similar  shows.  The  great  hall  of  the  castle 
would  also  be  a  most  fitting  place  for  the  per- 
formance, and  here  it  probably  came  off,  on 
Michaelmas  night  (September  29),  1634. 

In  order  to  give  time  for  the  setting  of  the 
songs  to  music  and  the  training  of  the  per- 
formers, Milton  must  have  been  ready  with 
his  manuscript  at  least  by  the  beginning  of 


IOO  JOHN  MILTON 

the  summer.  Lawes  probably  gave  him  such 
personal  details  about  the  actors  and  the 
scene  of  the  intended  performance  as  would 
enable  him  to  insert  the  proper  compliments 
and  to  introduce  Sabrina  in  honor  of  the  river 
Severn.)  It  may  possibly  be  that  Milton,  like 
the  majority  of  his  countrymen,  felt  that 
Prynne  had  gone  too  far  in  his  "  Histriomas- 
tix,"  and  that  the  young  Puritan  was  not  sorry 
to  have  an  opportunity  to  show  that  religious 
sincerity  has  no  necessary  connection  with  a 
long  face.  He  may,  too,  have  been  glad  of 
an  occasion  to  measure  his  strength  with  the 
greatest  poets  of  the  day ;  and,  perhaps,  he 
may  have  desired  to  air  his  philosophy.  But 
this  is  all  mere  conjecture.  What  we  know 
for  certain  is  that  Lord  Brackley  performed 
the  part  of  the  First  Brother,  Mr.  Thomas 
Egerton  of  the  Second  Brother,  Lady  Alice 
Egerton  of  the  Lady,  and  Lawes  of  the  Attend- 
ant Spirit.  We  do  not  know  who  took  the 
part  of  Comus,  or  who  composed  his  rout  and 
the  company  of  dancing  shepherds,1  but  in 

1  In  the   normal    anti-masque    the    performers   were  hired 
actors. 


WORKS  IOI 

all  probability  other  children  of  the  Earl  and 
his  friends  or  retainers  filled  the  remaining 
parts.  We  are  not  even  informed  how  the 
masque  was  received,  or  whether  Milton  saw 
it  produced ;  but  we  know  that  Lawes's  friends 
asked  for  copies,  and  that  to  save  himself 
trouble  he  had  an  edition  published  in  1637  — 
probably  from  the  acting  copy.  The  name  of 
the  writer  was  omitted,  the  motto  prefixed  show- 
ing that  his  consent  to  publish  had  been  given 
reluctantly.  Neither  in  this  nor  in  the  editions 
of  1645  and  1673  was  the  title  "  Comus "  em- 
ployed, Milton  preferring  the  simple  designa- 
tion —  "  A  Mask/'  Lawes's  edition  was  prefaced 
by  a  very  complimentary  letter  "  to  the  author  " 
from  the  famous  Provost  of  Eton,  Sir  Henry 
Wotton,  which  shows  clearly  what  judicious 
critics  must  have  thought  of  Milton  and  his 
work  long  before  he  became  famous.  In  the 
edition  of  1673  there  was  no  need  of  such 
commendation,  and  the  letter  was  omitted.  It 
remains  to  add  that  "  Comus"  exists  in  Milton's 
handwriting  among  the  Cambridge  Mss.,  and 
that  another  copy,  known  as  the  Bridgewater 
Ms.,  is  extant,  which  is  supposed  to  be  the 


102  JOHN   MILTON 

acting  copy,  in  Lawes's  handwriting.  The 
textual  variations  are  not  specially  important. 
But  we  have  dwelt  sufficiently  upon  the 
external  features  of  "  Comus,"  and  must  now 
compare  it  with  other  productions  of  its  kind. 
To  do  this  thoroughly  would  require  a  some- 
what detailed  account  of  the  development  of 
the  masque  from  its  origin,  as  a  spectacular 
feature  of  an  Italian  wedding  feast,  to  its 
culmination  in  the  entertainment  which  Ben 
Jonson,  Inigo  Jones,  Ferrabosco,  Thomas  Giles, 
and  the  lords  and  ladies  of  the  court  labored 
to  make  worthy  of  the  favor  of  their  pedant 
king,  James  I.  — fan  entertainment  which  gave 
scope  to  the  amateur  actor,  the  engineer,  the 
painter,  the  sculptor,  the  architect,  the  musician, 
the  poet — to  say  nothing  of  the  dancing-master, 
the  dressmaker,  and  the  upholsterer.  For  such 
a  sketch  we  have  no  space  here,  nor  can  we 
give  an  analysis  of  a  typical  masque  with  which 
the  reader  might  compare  "  Comus,"  and  thus 
judge  of  the  deviations  of  the  latter  from  the 
normal  form.1  We  must  therefore  content 

1  The  reader  who  is  interested  may  find  good  accounts  of 
the  development  of  the  masque  in  Ward's  "  History  of  English 


WORKS  103 

ourselves  with  the  statement  that  even  in  such 
an  elaborate  piece  as  William  Browne's  "  Inner 
Temple  Masque,"  which  contains  some  delight- 
ful poetry,  the  chief  emphasis  was  laid  on  the 
scenery,  the  costumes,  the  dancing,  and  the 
music,  while  in  "Comus,"  on  the  other  hand, 
Milton  laid  as  little  stress  as  possible  upon 
externals,  and  concentrated  his  energy  chiefly  on 
the  literary  side  of  his  work.  Against  Browne's 
329  rhyming  verses  he  gave  1023  lines,  a 
large  portion  of  which  belonged  to  the  met- 
rical form  appropriate  to  the  regular  drama 
rather  than  to  the  masque — to  wit,  blank  verse. 
These  variations  have  led,  as  we  shall  now 
see,  to  much  confusion  among  the  critics  as 
to  the  real  nature  of  "  Comus." 

There  are,  indeed,  few  poems  in  literature 
with  regard  to  which  critical  opinion  has  been 
more  hopelessly  mixed,  certainly  on  points  of 
detail.  Some  time  since  much  amusement  was 
caused  by  the  statement,  afterward  contra- 
Dramatic  Literature,"  Symonds's  "  Shakspere's  Predecessors  in 
the  English  Drama,"  and  Masson's  "  Life  of  Milton,"  vol.  i. 
Masson  analyzes  Shirley's  "  Triumph  of  Peace,"  and  I  give  an 
analysis  of  Browne's  "  Inner  Temple  Masque  "  in  my  edition  of 
the  "  L' Allegro,"  etc. 


104  JOHN   MILTON 

dieted,  that  a  professor  in  a  leading  university 
had  said  to  his  class  that  for  his  own  part  he 
did  not  think  "  Comus  "  was  "  in  it  "  compared 
with  "The  Faithful  Shepherdess."  One  imme- 
diately set  against  this  jaunty  dictum  Macau- 
lay's  well-known  opinion  that  Milton's  great 
masque  — "  the  noblest  performance  of  the 
kind  which  exists  in  any  language"  —  "is  as 
far  superior  to  '  The  Faithful  Shepherdess  '  as 
'The  Faithful  Shepherdess'  is  to  the  'Aminta,' 
or  the  'Aminta'  to  the  '  Pastor  Fido ' ; "  and 
those  persons  who  had  read  the  four  pastoral 
dramas  named  felt  that  for  once  at  least  in 
his  life  Macaulay  shone  as  a  critic  in  com- 
parison with  some  of  his  successors.  Certainly 
the  hypothetical  modern  critic  went  far  beyond 
even  the  censorious  Dr.  Johnson,  and  his  ex- 
travagance confirms  the  need  of  an  inquiry 
into  the  reasons  for  the  divergence  of  critical 
opinions  on  the  subject  of  "  Comus." 

We  must  remember  at  the  outset  that  most 
of  the  critics,  sooner  or  later,  save  themselves 
from  ridicule  by  acknowledging  the  greatness 
of  " Comus"  as  a  whole.  Even  Dr.  Johnson, 
after  affirming  that  the  songs  contained  in  the 


WORKS  105 

masque  were  "harsh  in  their  diction  and  not 
very  musical  in  their  numbers,"  was  moved  to 
say  that  "  a  work  more  truly  poetical  is  rarely 
found."  When  a  critic  who  was  radically  in- 
capacitated for  appreciating  much  that  was 
best  in  Milton  could  say  this  of  "  Comus,"  it 
ought  not  to  surprise  us  to  find  another  Tory 
critic,  Mr.  Saintsbury,  who  can  appreciate 
Milton,  going  astray  in  the  opposite  direction, 
and  declaring  that  it  is  in  "  Comus "  that 
"  Milton's  poetical  power  is  at  its  greatest 
height."  "Comus"  is  so  good  in  parts  that 
it  is  no  wonder  that  Dr.  Johnson  forgot  for 
a  moment  to  be  censorious,  and  Mr.  Saints- 
bury  to  be  entirely  bizarre.  But  we  are  not 
warranted  in  judging  a  poem  from  the  political 
and  ecclesiastical  views  of  its  author,  as  John- 
son practically  did ;  or  from  the  supreme 
beauty  of  certain  of  its  passages,  as  Mr. 
Saintsbury  seems  to  do.  A  poem  must  be 
judged  as  a  whole,  and  it  is  just  here  that 
the  critics  have  been  most  likely  to  go  astray 
with  regard  to  "Comus." 

Some   have   insisted    upon   viewing   it   as    a 
lyrical  drama ;  others  as  an  epic  drama  (what- 


IO6  JOHN    MILTON 

ever  that  may  be);  some  have  called  it  a 
philosophical  poem  ;  others  have  been  pleased 
to  dwell  upon  its  allegorical  and  satirical  con- 
tent. Milton,  however,  called  it  a  masque; 
and  as  a  masque  it  must  be  judged,  not  as  a 
regular  drama,  or  as  a  poem,  strictly  so  called. 
If  now  we  compare  "  Comus  "  with  the  masques 
of  Ben  Jonson,  Fletcher,  Browne,  and  others, 
we  shall  agree  with  those  critics  who  maintain 
that  Milton  has  surpassed  his  competitors  al- 
most as  completely  as  Shakspere  has  surpassed 
his  rivals  in  the  regular  drama.  "  Comus  "  is 
by  far  the  greatest  English  masque.  But  the 
masque,  even  in  Milton's  hands,  is  not  the 
high  and  perfect  work  of  art  that  the  regular 
drama  is  in  Shakspere's.  It  could  not  be,  for 
it  was  a  hybrid  form  of  art,  and  had  the  defects 
of  its  qualities. 

What  Milton  did  was  to  take  a  species  of 
courtly  entertainment,  of  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  dancing,  music,  painting,  architecture, 
and  poetry  were  component  parts,  and  elimi- 
nate, as  far  as  he  could,  all  of  its  elements 
save  poetry.  But  he  was  compelled  to  retain 
enough  of  the  discredited  elements  to  keep 


WORKS  lO/ 

his  audience  in  a  good  humor,  and  to  pre- 
serve the  character  of  his  composition  when  it 
should  be  published.  The  unity  of  a  true 
work  of  art  was  thus  unattainable  from  the 
first ;  and  there  was  a  dangerous  pitfall  before 
him  at  which  he  was  sure  to  stumble.  In 
elaborating  his  plot  and  individualizing  his 
characters  more  than  was  customary  with  his 
predecessors  in  masque-writing,  and  especially 
in  making  considerable  use  of  a  verse  form 
characteristic  rather  of  the  regular  drama  than 
of  the  masque,  he  was  making  demands  upon 
the  interest  and  attention  of  his  audience  (to 
a  less  extent  of  his  readers)  that  could  not 
reasonably  be  responded  to  unless  he  should 
be  able  to  impart  to  his  masque  more  of 
dramatic  action  than  even  Jonson  had  been 
wont  to  introduce  into  the  productions  of  which 
he  was  so  proud.  With  less  music,  scenery, 
and  dancing,  there  must  be  more  action,  or 
the  characters  would  merely  seem  to  be  making 
long  speeches.  But,  unfortunately,  Milton  was 
not  a  dramatic  poet.  He  belonged  to  what 
Mr.  Theodore  Watts-Dunton  has  happily  de- 
nominated the  class  of  poets  "  of  relative 


108  JOHN   MILTON 

dramatic  vision"  —  that  is,  poets  who,  unlike 
the  true  dramatist,  cannot  create  characters 
that  act  and  speak  as  flesh  and  blood  indi- 
viduals, different  from  their  creator  and  from 
one  another.  The  personality  of  these  quasi- 
dramatists  is  always  present  in  their  characters, 
who  seem  like  puppets  speaking  their  creators' 
thoughts.  When  the  quasi-dramatist  is  great, 
the  puppet  will,  of  course,  be  splendid  ;  but 
nothing  comparable  to  a  living,  breathing 
Priam,  or  Othello,  or  even  a  Wife  of  Bath. 
When  now  the  quasi-dramatist  becomes  an 
epic  poet,  like  Dante  in  "The  Divine  Comedy," 
or  Milton  in  "  Paradise  Lost,"  and  tells  about 
his  characters,  the  effect  is  so  magnificent  that 
it  is  only  when  we  compare  his  work  with 
the  truly  dramatic  epics  of  Homer  that  we 
can  see  his  limitations.  But  when  he  casts 
his  work  into  more  or  less  dramatic  form, 
when  his  characters  no  longer  have  him  to 
tell  about  them,  but  must  act  for  themselves, 
their  puppet  nature  becomes  only  too  apparent. 
So  it  is  that  in  "  Comus  "  Milton  is  compelled, 
by  the  nature  of  his  experiment  upon  the 
masque,  to  give  us  characters  in  action  in 


WORKS  109 

order  to  keep  up  our  interest,  and  yet  by  the 
very  nature  of  his  genius  must  content  himself 

with    offering  (us   noble   puppets  speaking   his 

-.«•_— — 

own  lofty  sentiments  in  language  fit  for  a 
but  no  more  capable  of  acting  their 
parts  like  men  and  women  than  a  troupe  of 
marionettes. 

This  is  what  Dr.  Johnson  saw  when  he 
faulted  "  Comus "  as  a  drama.  But,  say  the 
critics  with  a  charming  unanimity,  "Comus" 
is  a  masque  and  must  be  judged  as  a  masque ; 
therefore  Dr.  Johnson  has  blundered  again 
with  regard  to  Milton  —  let  him  be  anathema ! 
Precisely  so.  "  Comus  "  must  be  judged  as  a 
masque,  but  this  is  just  what  the  critics  fail  to 
do.  If  they  would  really  compare  "  Comus  " 
with  other  masques,  and  stop  abusing  Dr. 
Johnson,  they  would  see  that  it  is  because  Mil- 
ton ignored  the  canons  of  masque-writing  that 
he  produced  a  work  of  art  still  more  hybrid  than 
a  masque  —  a  something  between  a  masque 
and  a  drama  which  demanded  for  its  complete 
success  dramatic  qualities  that  its  author  could 
not  give  it.  If  this  be  a  correct  statement  of 
the  facts  in  the  case,  it  is  no  wonder  that  critics 


IIO  JOHN   MILTON 

have  not  known  just  what  to  say  about  "  Co- 
mus "  as  a  whole,  or  that  such  an  admirer  of 
Milton  as  Dr.  Garnett  can  find  it  in  his  heart 
to  call  the  Elder  Brother  a  prig.  But  what  are 
we  to  say  of  Mr.  Saintsbury's  extravagant 
statement  that  the  author  of  "  Paradise  Lost" 
reaches  in  "  Comus "  his  greatest  height  of 
poetical  power  ?  It  is  almost  as  bizarre  as  Mr. 
Pater's  desire  to  see  the  Athens  of  Pisistra- 
tus  rather  than  the  Athens  of  Pericles. 

Yet  how  are  we  to  explain  this  anomaly,  that 
a  masque  which  is  not  a  true  masque  surpasses 
all  other  masques,  and  has  won  for  its  author 
the  plaudits  of  nearly  every  cultivated  reader 
from  Sir  Henry  Wotton's  time  to  our  own  ? 
The  answer  is  simple  —  there  is  no  masque  that 
so  impresses  us  by  the  nobility  and  beauty  of 
its  conception  or  execution.  This  nobility  and 
beauty  are  so  conspicuous  in  "  Comus "  as  to 
outweigh  all  technical  defects  ;  besides,  we  are 
now  compelled  to  judge  masques  in  our  closets, 
and  are  therefore  prone  to  judge  them  merely 
by  the  poetry  they  contain.  Perhaps,  if  we 
could  have  seen  one  of  Ben  Jonson's  best 
masques  presented  at  court  with  all  its  su- 


WORKS  1 1 1 

perb  accessories,  we  might  not  have  been 
thoroughly  disposed  to  acknowledge  the  su- 
premacy of  "  Comus "  as  a  fashionable  enter- 
tainment But  if  we  had  possessed  true  poetic 
discernment,  Hallam's  often-quoted  remark 
would  have  applied  to  us  —  that  only  one  per- 
formance of  "  Comus"  ought  to  have  been 
sufficient  "to  convince  any  one  of  taste  and 
feeling  that  a  great  poet  had  arisen  in  Eng- 
land, and  one  partly  formed  in  a  different 
school  from  his  contemporaries." 

Yes,  a  truly  great  poet,  differing  from  his 
predecessors  and  contemporaries,  had  arisen 
in  England.  Spenser  had  sung  the  praises 
of  purity,  but  never  with  the  masculine  vigor 
and  grace  of  Milton.  Fletcher  had  employed 
his  exquisite  lyrical  genius  on  the  same  theme, 
but  had  not  struck  Milton's  clear  seraphic  note. 
Shakspere  had,  indeed,  embodied  perfect  pu- 
rity in  Ferdinand  and  Miranda,  but  he  had  set 
them  apart  in  an  enchanted  world.  It  re- 
mained for  Milton,  while  he  was  compelled  to 
use  a  similarly  remote  setting,  to  press  home 
to  us,  with  all  the  superb  resources  of  "  divine 
philosophy  "  and  equally  divine  art,  the  splen- 


112  JOHN   MILTON 

did  truth  that  purity  of  mind  and  soul  and  body 
is  to  be  aimed  at  and  attained  in  our  daily  life 
below.  "  Comus  "  may  be  a  hybrid  form  of 
a  hybrid  species  of  composition  ;  but  it  is  none 
the  less  a  supreme  masterpiece,  because  it 
is  the  noblest  tribute  to  virtue  ever  paid  in 
verse. 

In  view  of  this  fact  many  of  the  comments 
that  have  been  made  upon  "Comus"  by  editors 
and  critics  seem  to  be  trivial  and  impertinent. 
It  matters  little  to  any  one  save  Milton's  biog- 
rapher, whether  in  this  passage  or  that  the  poet 
was  satirizing  the  court  or  otherwise  showing 
his  puritanical  proclivities.  It  is  always  more 
or  less  interesting,  however,  to  trace  a  poet's 
indebtedness  to  his  predecessors,  and  we  may 
therefore  bring  this  chapter  to  a  close  by  briefly 
discussing  this  point. 

The  often-repeated  story  that  the  masque 
was  founded  on  an  actual  adventure  that  be- 
fell the  Lady  Alice  Egerton  and  her  brothers 
seems  to  rest  on  slight  foundations,  and  is  rather 
based  on  "  Comus  "  than  "Comus  "  on  it.  Put- 
ting this  aside,  the  main  sources  about  which  - 
critics  are  pretty  well  agreed  are  George  Peele's 


WORKS  I I 3 

play,  "The  Old  Wives'  Tale,"  Fletcher's  "The 
Faithful  Shepherdess,"  the  Circe  myth  as  de- 
tailed in  the  classical  authors  and  in  Spenser 
and  his  school  of  poets,  and  finally,  the 
"  Comus "  of  Puteanus  and  Jonson's  masque, 
"  Pleasure  Reconciled  to  Virtue." 

With  regard  to  Peele's  play,  which  was 
printed  in  1595,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
it  stimulated  Milton's  imagination,  and  gave 
him  the  actual  kernel  of  his  plot.  As  to 
Fletcher's  delightful  pastoral  comedy,  of  which 
at  least  three  editions  seem  to  have  been  pub- 
lished before  "  Comus  "  was  acted,  and  which 
had  been  revived  as  a  court-play  in  the  winter 
of  1633-34,  it  is  certain  that  Milton  was  more 
indebted  to  it  than  Fletcher  was  to  Tasso  and 
Guarini.  The  motif  of  the  two  poems  is  the 
same,  the  power  of  chastity  to  ward  off  evils, 
yet  here  Milton  is  much  more  plainly  lord  of 
his  native  province  than  Fletcher  is.  But  the 
effect  of  Fletcher's  exquisite  lyrical  style  as 
seen  in  the  latter  portion  of  "  Comus  "  is  what 
most  closely  connects  the  two  poets.  It  is 
impossible  here  to  bring  out  this  influence 
clearly,  but  the  reader  may  be  confidently  re- 


114  J°HN    MILTON 

ferred  to  the  elder  poet's  work  to  discover  the 
extent  and  quality  of  the  younger  poet's  in- 
debtedness. Our  author's  literary  obligations 
with  regard  to  his  use  of  the  Circe  myth*  are 
not  very  definitely  traceable.  He  naturally 
had  recourse  to  the  "  Odyssey,"  directly  or 
indirectly,  for  that  great  poem  is  the  fountain- 
head  of  romance.  Ovid  had  previously  drawn 
from  the  same  source  with  regard  to  the 
same  subject  ("  Metamorphoses,"  lib.  xiv.),  and 
minute  critics  have  detected  in  "Comus"  the 
influence  of  the  Roman  poet.  Still  more 
patent,  however,  is  the  influence  of  Spenser 
and  the  great  romantic  poets  of  Italy,  who 
sang  "  of  forests  and  enchantments  drear." 
The  Circe  myth  is  also  the  subject  of  Browne's 
"  Inner  Temple  Masque,"  and  there  are  sev- 
eral touches  in  "  Comus  "  that  may  possibly  be 
traceable  to  this  rival  poem.1 

1  Milton  was  too  young  to  have  seen  the  masque  performed, 
and  I  do  not  find  any  evidence  in  the  latest  edition  of  Browne's 
poems  that  his  charming  trifle  was  revived  ;  still,  more  than  one 
manuscript  copy  of  it  was  in  existence,  and  Milton  is  known  to 
have  been  interested  in  "  Britannia's  Pastorals."  A  copy  of  the 
folio  edition  of  the  latter  poem  in  Mr.  Huth's  library  is  even 
thought  to  contain  annotations  by  him. 


WORKS  1 1  5 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Milton  did  not 
give  his  masque  the  name  it  now  bears ;  per- 
haps he  was  actuated  both  by  modesty  and 
by  *  desire  to  avoid  the  confusion  of  his 
poem  with  a  Latin  play  entitled  "  Comus," 
written  by  a  professor  at  Louvain,  Hendrik 
van  der  Putten,  or,  as  he  was  known  to  the 
scholarly  world,  Erycius  Puteanus.  This  "ex- 
travaganza in  prose  and  verse,"  as  Masson 
calls  it,  had  been  printed  in  1608,  and  an  Eng- 
lish edition  had  appeared  at  Oxford  in  1634. 
I  have  not  been  able  to  see  a  copy  of  it,  but 
I  gather  from  the  editors  that  it  is  not  unlikely 
that  Milton  had  seen  the  book  and  taken  a 
few  hints  from  it.  Ben  Jonson,  too,  in  his 
masque,  "  Pleasure  Reconciled  to  Virtue " 
(1619),  had  introduced  Comus  as  a  character, 
but  only  as  "the  god  of  cheer  or  the  Belly." 
Milton  could  have  got  little  inspiration  from 
this  "  first  father  of  sauce  and  deviser  of 
jelly,"  whose  personal  appearance,  though  re- 
sembling that  of  our  great  Comus,  was  plainly 
derived  from  the  "  Imagines "  of  the  elder 
Philostratus.  The  Comus  of  Puteanus  is  said 
to  be  "  a  much  subtler  embodiment  of  sensual 


Il6  JOHN   MILTON 

hedonism"1  than  Jonson's  belly-god,  but  all 
good  critics  are  agreed  that  Milton's  concep- 
tion of  the  character  is  essentially  his  own, 
and  that,  in  the  words  of  his  chief  biographer, 
"  he  was  bold  enough  to  add  a  brand-new 
god,  no  less,  to  the  classic  Pantheon,  and  to 
import  him  into  Britain."  But  it  would  seem 
that  Puteanus  ought  at  least  to  have  the  credit 
for  having  seen  that  the  shadowy  deity  of  the 
post-classical  period  could  be  developed  into 
a  figure  of  interest  and  importance. 

We  have  now  fairly  described  the  extent  of 
Milton's  indebtedness  to  other  writers,  and  it 
will  be  seen  that  he  did  no  more  than  almost 
every  other  great  poet  has  done  —  he  appro- 
priated and  bettered.  The  plagiarist-hunter 
will  therefore  find  little  true  profit  in  tracking 
him ;  but  as  this  eccentric  is  usually  harmless, 
it  may  be  as  well  to  amuse  him  by  referring 
him  not  only  to  Spenser's  description  of  "the 
Maske  of  Cupid  "  in  the  twelfth  canto  of  the 
third  book  of  "  The  Faerie  Queene,"  but  also 
to  that  stanza  of  the  poem  (II.,  xii.,  56)  in 

1  See  Verity's  introduction  to  his  excellent  edition  of 
"  Comus." 


WORKS  II/ 

which  a  "comely  dame"  is  represented  as  hold- 
ing a  cup  of  gold  full  of  sappy  liquor  whereof 

"  She  used  to  give  to  drinke  to  each 
Whom  passing  by  she  happened  to  meet 
It  was  her  guise  all  straungers  goodly  so  to  greet." 

When  these  verses  are  compared  with  the 
passage  in  "  Comus  "  containing  the  lines,  — 

"  Offering  to  every  weary  traveller 
His  orient  liquor  in  a  crystal  glass 
To  quench  the  drouth  of  Phrebus,"  — 

it  ought  to  be  as  apparent  that  Spenser  is 
the  author  of  "  Comus "  as  that  Bacon  is  the 
author  of  the  plays  attributed  to  Shakspere. 

But  it  is  time  to  conclude,  even  though  we 
must  forego  the  pleasure  of  commenting  upon 
particular  passages  of  this  exquisite  poem. 
The  reader  who  loves  poetry  will  lose  nothing 
through  our  silence,  for  such  an  one  will  need 
no  critic  to  point  out  to  him  the  abiding  love- 
liness and  beauty  of  the  purest  of  English 
poems,  f*  Comus "  is  great  in  the  purity  and 
beauty .  of  its  sentiments,  in  the  depth  and 
range  of  its  underlying  philosophy,  in  the 
nobility  of  its  diction,  and  the  fluidity  of  its 


Il8  JOHN,,  MILTON 


rhythmical   movement.^  It  is   not   great  struc- 

^-  in—    i  _^^  ^ — ' 

turally,  and  could  not  have  maintained  the 
grand  style  at  its  height;  but  this  is  only  an- 
other way  of  saying  that  in  1634  Milton  could 
not  have  written  "  Paradise  Lost."  The  im- 
perfect of  a  higher  species  may,  however,  be 
worth  much  more  to  us  than  the  perfect  of 
a  lower  species.  Gray's  "Elegy"  is  more 
perfect  as  a  work  of  art  than  "Comus,"  and 
is  beautiful  in  itself,  but  Milton's  masque  ob- 
viously represents  a  far  higher  poetical  achieve- 
ment. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    ELEGIAC    POEMS 

WHILE  Milton  as  the  author  of  "  Lycidas " 
and  the  "  Epitaphium  Damonis "  is  assuredly 
the  greatest  English  elegist,  it  does  not  follow 
that  he  is  the  most  typical.  That  honor  is 
reserved  for  Gray.  Milton  seldom  or  never 
fails  to  lay  the  tender  and  melodious  flute 
aside  for  a  moment  to  give  us  more  inspiring 
strains  upon  the  trumpet  or  the  lyre.  This 
fact  has  given  some  purists  occasion  for  inept 
criticism  —  especially  with  regard  to  "  Lycidas." 
They  seem  to  think  that  because  the  strictly 
elegiac  note  of  lament  (quenmonia)  is  not  kept 
throughout,  the  poem  ceases  to  be  harmonious, 
and  hence  to  be  a  work  of  art.  They  forget 
that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  fusion  of  diverse 
elements  in  art  as  well  as  in  chemistry.  A  me- 
chanical mixture  of  inharmonious  elements  will 
certainly  not  produce  a  work  of  art ;  a  mechan- 
119 


120  JOHN   MILTON 

ical  mixture  of  merely  diverse  but  not  neces- 
sarily inharmonious  elements  will  certainly  de- 
tract from,  if  not  completely  mar,  a  work  of  art. 
But  a  fusion  of  such  diverse  elements  may, 
under  favorable  circumstances,  produce  a  new 
form  of  artistic  product,  or  modify  an  old  and 
well-known  form.  The  idyllists  of  Alexandria, 
while  preserving  the  metre  and  some  other 
features  of  the  older  and  the  newer  epic, 
nevertheless,  by  the  fusion  of  new  elements, 
produced  a  separate  and  distinct  form  of  poetry. 
The  fusion  of  this  form,  the  idyll,  with  the 
elegy,  modified  the  older  form,  and  produced 
what  we  know  as  the  pastoral  elegy.  Whether 
now  Milton  was  able  to  modify  this  last  form 
and  still  preserve  its  artistic  qualities  and 
nature,  is  a  question  that  must  be  discussed 
when  we  consider  "  Lycidas." 

As  we  have  seen,  Milton's  first  elegiac  was 
almost  his  first  poetic  effort.  In  the  autumn  of 
1626,  when  he  was  not  quite  eighteen,  his  sister, 
Mrs.  Anne  Phillips,  lost  her  first  child,  a  daugh- 
ter, and  the  young  collegian  lamented  the  event 
in  the  well-known  poem,  "  On  the  Death  of  a 
Fair  Infant,  dying  of  a  Cough."  If  it  were 


WORKS  121 


not  for  the  fact  that  such  contentions  are 
always  unnecessary,  because  always  incapable 
of  settlement,  one  might  well  maintain  that 
this  is  the  most  remarkable  poem  ever  written 
by  a  boy  of  equal  age.  It  seems  to  be  even 
better  than  Lamb's  famous  and  admirable  lines 
"  On  an  Infant  dying  as  soon  as  born,"  and  it 
is  certainly  better  than  Lovelace's  "  Elegy " 
on  the  Princess  Katherine,  "born,  christened, 
buried  in  one  day"  —  with  both  of  which 
poems  one  naturally  compares  it.  If  it  has 
not  the  subtle  tenderness  of  Lamb's  lines,  it 
has  a  dignity  and  elevation  worthy  of  the  Mil- 
ton of  riper  years.  This  elevation  warrants 
certain  writers  in  treating  the  poem  as  an 
ode.  It  is,  indeed,  an  elegiac  ode,  complete  in 
eleven  of  those  modified  rhyme-royal  stanzas 
that  have  been  already  described,  and  it  is 
one  of  the  best  English  poems  of  its  kind, 
although  manifestly  inferior  to  Dryden's  master- 
piece in  the  same  class  of  composition,  the 
splendid  and  imperishable  "Ode  to  the  Mem- 
ory of  Mrs.  Anne  Killigrew." 

As  has  just  been  intimated,  it  is  not  difficult 
to  trace  in  this   youthful   poem    qualities   that 


122  JOHN    MILTON 

were  never  to  be  absent  from  Milton's  work. 
There  is  the  wonderful  mastery  of  language 
and  rhythm,  the  high  seriousness,  the  free  and 
unpedantic  use  of  classical  allusion,  that  have 
distinguished  Milton  as  an  artist  from  all  other 
English  poets.  There  is,  it  is  true,  as  in  most 
of  the  early  poems,  a  marked  leaning  toward 
the  Fantastic  School,  yet  there  is  so  much 
stateliness  of  manner  that  the  extravagances  are 
overlooked.  But  a  quotation  or  two  will  ob- 
viate the  necessity  for  further  comment:  — 

"O  fairest  flower,  no  sooner  blown  but  blasted, 
Soft  silken  primrose  fading  timelessly "  — 

are  verses  that  any  poet,  even  the  greatest, 
might  be  proud  to  call  his  own.  The  eleva- 
tion proper  to  the  ode  form  appears  plainly 
in  the  following  stanza,  the  fourth :  — 

"Yet  art  thou  not  inglorious  in  thy  fate; 
For  so  Apollo,  with  unweeting  hand, 
Whilom  did  slay  his  dearly-loved  mate, 
Young  Hyacinth  born  on  Eurotas'  strand, 
Young  Hyacinth  the  pride  of  Spartan  land ; 
But  then  transformed  him  to  a  purple  flower; 
Alack !    that   so   to  change   thee   Winter   had    no 
power." 


WORKS  123 

Certainly  there  was  no  other  poet  living  in 
Jacobean  England  save  Ben  Jonson  who  could 
have  paralleled  this  stanza,  nor  in  the  quarter 
of  a  century  to  follow  was  there  to  be  one 
capable  of  equalling  it,  although  it  was  to  be 
a  period  of  considerable  activity  in  the  com- 
position of  elegiac  verse.  Perhaps,  however, 
an  exception  to  this  statement  must  be  made 
in  favor  of  the  eight  immortal  lines  in  which 
the  great  Marquis  of  Montrose  poured  forth 
the  passion  and  the  anguish  of  his  soul  at  the 
execution  of  his  royal  master. 

But  Milton  was  soon  to  use  his  elegiac 
powers  to  better  purpose  than  in  this  poem, 
or  in  the  Latin  elegies  that  will  be  discussed 
later.  In  1630  he  composed  his  splendid  epi- 
taph on  Shakspere,  thus  fairly  measuring  his 
strength  against  Ben  Jonson  in  the  latter's 
strongest  point.  Although  it  hardly  seems 
that  the  epitaph  on  "the  admirable  dramatic 
poet,"  which  was  published  anonymously  in 
the  Second  Folio  of  1632,  is  equal  in  human 
appropriateness  and  in  perfection  of  workman- 
ship to  the  best  of  Jonson's  epitaphs,  such  as 
that  on  Philip  Gray,  or  that  it  is  as  important 


124  J°HN   MILTON 

as  a  tribute  to  Shakspere's  greatness  as  Jon- 
son's  famous  memorial  lines,  still  no  one  will 
deny  that  it  is  worthy  to  rank  among  the  great- 
est of  epitaphs  and  the  greatest  of  tributes. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  point  out  any  verses  of 
Dryden  or  Pope  that  excel  in  epigrammatic 
terseness  and  strength  the  closing  couplet :  — 

"And  so  sepulchered  in  such  pomp  dost  lie, 
That  kings  for  such  a  tomb  would  wish  to  die." 

About  this  time  Milton  wrote  his  humorous 
elegies  on  the  death  of  Hobson,  the  Cambridge 
carrier,  the  well-known  original  of  the  expres- 
sion "  Hobson's  choice."  It  is  not  easy  to 
associate  with  Milton  the  idea  of  humor,  at 
least  of  the  fantastic  sort  displayed  in  these 
poems.  But  they  do  contain  humor,  although 
of  a  not  very  volatile  kind.  They  are  better 
than  the  somewhat  similar  verses  written  by 
Bishop  Corbet  on  the  manciple  and  butler  of 
Christ  Church,  Oxford ;  but  they  are  certainly 
not  equal  to  Robert  Fergusson's  delightful  elegy 
on  John  Hogg,  porter  to  the  University  of  St. 
Andrews. 

In   1631   the  young  poet  wrote  an  epitaph, 


WORKS  I2S 

long  enough  to  be  an  elegy,  on  the  Mar- 
chioness of  Winchester,  who  had  been  lamented 
by  Jonson  and  others,  and  whose  husband  was 
to  have  the  honor  of  an  epitaph  by  Dryden. 
Singularly  enough,  as  in  the  case  of  Chaucer 
and  the  Duchess  of  Lancaster,  the  poet  was 
of  exactly  the  same  age  as  the  subject  of  his 
verses  —  twenty-three.  The  epitaph,  which  is 
seventy-four  verses  long,  is  in  that  blending  of 
seven-  and  eight-syllabled  couplets  which  Mil- 
ton borrowed  from  the  Elizabethans  like  Barn- 
field,  but  of  which  he  is  so  great  a  master. 
It  is  in  many  respects  a  true  epitaph  in  spite 
of  its  length,  and  it  has  some  of  the  charac- 
teristics of  a  requiem.  As  in  the  case  of  many 
other  epitaphs  of  the  period,  the  fact  that  the 
lady  died  in  childbirth  is  given  a  prominence 
that  seems  unnecessary  to  our  modern  notions ; 
but  at  least  the  poem  is  practically  unmarred 
by  conceits,  although  it  is  a  typical  product 
of  the  Cavalier  muse  of  Milton's  earlier  years. 
The  Puritan  that  was  to  be  is  foreshadowed, 
but  only  foreshadowed,  in  the  exquisite  com- 
parison with  Jacob's  wife  Rachel,  and  the 
classical  touch  is,  of  course,  present  also. 


126  JOHN   MILTON 

There  is  little  in  English  poetry  that  marks 
a  higher  reach  than  the  concluding  verses ; 
and  the  elegy  as  a  whole,  with  all  due  regard 
to  Mr.  Swinburne's  contrary  opinion,  is  dis* 
tinctly  superior  to  Ben  Jonson's  lines  upon 
the  same  lady. 

Six  years  later,  after  the  retirement  at 
Horton  had  produced  "Comus,"  Milton  com- 
posed the  crowning  poem  of  his  youth,  the 
pastoral  elegy  "  Lycidas." 

The  external  facts  relating  to  its  evolution 
are  ample  on  the  whole,  and  easy  to  set  forth. 
Among  his  friends  at  Christ's  College  had 
been  two  sons  of  Sir  John  King,  long  Secre- 
tary for  Ireland.  They  were  admitted  during 
his  third  year,  Roger,  the  elder,  being  sixteen, 
and  his  brother  Edward  two  years  younger. 
Nothing  seems  to  be  heard  of  them  until  four 
years  later,  when,  to  the  surprise  of  every  one, 
Edward  King  was  chosen  a  Fellow  of  the 
College,  in  obedience  to  a  royal  mandate, 
which  had  doubtless  been  obtained  through 
considerable  political  influence.  Such  royal 
interference  was  not  usual  or  palatable,  and 
it  must  have  been  especially  galling  to  Milton, 


WORKS  127 

who,  as  a  Bachelor  of  two  years'  standing  and 
"  an  acknowledged  ornament  of  his  college," 
to  quote  Professor  Masson,  had  good  reason 
to  expect  that  the  honor  would  have  fallen  to 
him.  He  seems,  however,  to  have  taken  his 
disappointment  gracefully,  and  to  have  shared 
the  general  liking  for  his  brilliant  and  amiable 
college-mate,  who,  thanks  to  the  pen  of  his 
disappointed  rival,  now  lives  in  our  memories 
even  more  freshly  than  his  two  greater  fellow- 
students,  John  Cleveland,  the  Royalist  poet, 
and  Henry  More,  the  Platonist.  After  Milton 
left  Cambridge,  King  continued  his  academic 
career  in  an  orthodox  and  successful  way, 
proceeding  M.A.  in  1633,  and  filling  the 
offices  of  tutor  and  praelector  while  preparing 
himself  for  active  work  in  the  Church.  Dur- 
ing the  vacation  of  1637,  however,  he  sailed 
from  Chester  for  Ireland,  where  he  had  been 
born  and  where  he  had  relations  and  friends 
of  high  social  standing.  On  the  lOth  of 
August  his  ship  struck  on  a  rock  off  the 
Welsh  coast,  and  went  down.  Accounts  vary 
as  to  the  cause  of  the  accident,  and  it  is  not 
known  how  many,  if  any,  were  saved.  The 


128  JOHN   MILTON 

memorial  volume  shortly  to  be  described  states 
that  he  died  in  the  act  of  prayer,  which  would 
imply  that  some  of  the  passengers  and  crew 
escaped,  but  may  be  merely  a  touch  of 
imagination. 

When  the  news  of  King's  death  was  re- 
ceived at  Cambridge,  it  was  at  once  felt  that 
special  steps  should  be  taken  to  do  honor  to  his 
memory,  and  at  that  time  this  laudable  desire 
could  be  accomplished  in  no  fitter  way  than 
by  the  publication  of  a  volume  of  elegies  in- 
scribed with  his  name.  The  collection,  when 
it  finally  appeared  from  the  University  Press, 
consisted  of  two  parts,  separately  paged  and 
titled,  both  bearing  the  date  1638.  The  first 
portion  consisted  of  twenty-three  poems  in 
Greek  and  Latin,  filling  thirty-six  pages.  Both 
the  learned  languages  figured  in  the  title, 
which  ran,  Justa  Edovardo  King  naufrago  ab 
amicis  mcerentibus,  amor  is  et  nveias  xdpiv,  or, 
as  Masson  once  translated  it,  "  Obsequies  to 
Edward  King,  drowned  'by  shipwreck,  in  token 
of  love  and  remembrance,  by  his  sorrowing 
friends  "  —  which  is  only  grammatically  am- 
biguous. The  second  part  consisted  of  thir- 


WORKS  129 

teen  English  poems,  filling  twenty-five  pages, 
and  was  entitled  "  Obsequies  to  the  Memorie 
of  Mr.  Edward  King,  Anno  Dom.  1638."  Of 
the  contributors  we  need  note  only  Henry 
More,  who  naturally  wrote  in  Greek;  Henry 
King,  Edward's  brother ;  Joseph  Beaumont, 
afterward  author  of  a  curious  poem  called 
"Psyche";  and  John  Cleveland,  who  subse- 
quently showed  his  powers  as  an  elegist  when 
Charles  I.  was  his  subject,  but  here  fell  little 
short  of  the  climax  of  absurdity. 

"  Lycidas  "  was,  of  course,  included  in  Milton's 
1645  edition  of  his  poems,  and  the  short  prose 
argument  which  now  precedes  the  verses  was 
then  inserted.  No  changes  save  orthographical 
were  made  in  the  edition  of  1673  ;  the  version 
of  1645  is,  therefore,  the  final  form  its  author 
gave  to  his  lyrical  masterpiece.  A  comparison 
of  the  Cambridge  Ms.,  the  edition  of  1638,  and 
a  copy  of  this  edition,  with  corrections  in  Mil- 
ton's handwriting,  still  preserved  in  the  Uni- 
versity Library  at  Cambridge,  has  enabled 
critics  to  trace  the  evolution  of  certain  passages 
of  the  poem,  and  thrown  much  light  upon 
Milton's  habits  of  composition.  Such  investl- 

K 


I3O  JOHN    MILTON 

gation  furnishes  technical  proof  of  what  every 
capable  critic  would  have  surmised,  that  the 
poet  was  a  meticulous  artist,  careful  of  word 
and  phrase,  and  sure  to  better  whatever  he 
changed. 

But  it  is  time  to  consider  "  Lycidas  "  in  its 
higher  relations  as  a  contribution  to  the  world's 
small  stock  of  supremely  excellent  poetry,  and 
first  of  the  artistic  category  to  which  it  belongs. 
Milton  himself  termed  it  a  "  monody,"  which 
it  is,  save  in  the  last  eight  lines ;  but  we  cannot 
read  far  in  it  without  discovering  that  it  is 
a  pastoral  poem  as  well.  We  are,  therefore, 
induced  to  class  it  as  a  pastoral  elegy,  and  to 
rank  it  with  the  famous  elegiac  idylls  of  Theoc- 
ritus, Bion,  Moschus,  and  Virgil,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  their  modern  imitators.  Perhaps  Milton 
was  induced  to  give  his  elegy  this  form  through 
the  influence  of  Spenser,  who  had  thus  lamented 
the  death  of  Sidney ;  but  it  is  more  likely  that 
he  was  affected  by  the  example  of  the  great 
Alexandrian  poets.  As  the  pastoral  is  now  an 
out-worn  form  of  verse,  it  follows  that  "  Lyci- 
das "  has  been  pronounced  to  be  artificial  and 
insincere,  Dr.  Johnson  being  the  most  stento- 


WORKS  131 

rian  exponent  of  this  view ;  it  will  therefore  be 
necessary  for  us  to  vindicate  the  fitness  of  the 
form  Milton  chose  for  his  tribute,  before  we 
can  proceed  with  our  discussion  of  the  poem 
itself. 

That  pastoral  poetry  is  more  or  less  artificial 
in  character  does  not  admit  of  doubt.  The 
goatherds  of  Theocritus  were,  indeed,  to  some 
extent  worthy  of  the  exquisite  poetry  put  .in 
their  mouths,  and  Theocritus  himself  may  be 
regarded  as  naturalistic  in  comparison  with  his 
followers.  But  that  the  Roman  and  the  mod- 
ern European  pastoral  is  to  any  appreciable 
extent  naturalistic,  is  a  position  that  only  a  very 
rash  critic  will  assume.  It  does  not  follow, 
however,  that  pastoral  poetry,  because  it  is  arti- 
ficial and  not  naturalistic,  is  therefore  to  be 
tabooed  as  a  form  of  art.  All  art  has  its  con- 
ventions, and  those  of  pastoral  poetry  are  ex- 
ceptional in  degree  rather  than  in  kind.  It  is 
a  convention  when  the  dramatist  makes  his 
hero  soliloquize  in  blank  verse  and  in  tragic 
vein — it  is  equally  a  convention  when  the 
pastoral  elegist  forgets  his  sheep  and  proceeds 
to  bewail  in  tender  elegiacs  his  mate  who  has 


132  JOHN   MILTON 

passed  to  Proserpina's  dark  abode.  But  to 
preserve  the  well-recognized  conventions  of 
pastoral  poetry,  and  at  the  same  time  refrain 
from  stirring  the  reader's  sense  of  the  incon- 
gruous and  the  ridiculous,  or  from  overtaxing 
his  imagination  and  his  sympathy  by  excessive 
artificiality,  is  an  achievement  that  few  poets 
have  attained  to.  Yet  that  there  have  been 
successful  pastoral  poets  and  great  pastoral 
poems  is  plain  to  any  student  of  our  literature 
who  recalls  the  names  of  Spenser  and  Fletcher, 
and  the  titles  "  Lycidas  "  and  "Thyrsis." 

With  regard  now  to  the  effect  of  the  arti- 
ficiality or  conventionality  of  this  class  of  poetry 
on  the  sincerity  of  the  poet  when  he  applies 
it  to  the  expression  of  his  personal  sorrow, 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  a  mediocre  poet  would 
either  fail  to  write  a  true  pastoral  or  else  fail 
to  show  one  spark  of  true  feeling.  A  glance 
through  the  volumes  of  Chalmers  will  bring 
to  light  a  number  of  frigid  performances  that 
will  prove  the  truth  of  this  assertion.  But  it 
often  happens  ~  that  a  real  poet  succeeds  best 
when  the  difficulties  of  his  art-form  are  greatest. 
Hence  it  is  that  three  of  the  finest  of  English 


WORKS  133 

elegies,  "  Lycidas,"  "  Adonais,"  and  "  Thyrsis," 
are  pastoral  elegies.  Nor  will  this  seem  curious 
when  we  remember  that  the  restrained  grief 
at  the  death  of  a  dear  relative  or  friend,  which 
is  due  to  the  conventionalities  of  society,  is 
often  far  more  impressive  than  the  wild  and 
unrestrained  grief  indulged  in  on  similar  oc- 
casions by  mourners  in  the  lower  ranks  of 
life.  If,  however,  any  one  is  still  in  doubt 
on  this  point,  let  him  compare  with  "  Lycidas  " 
two  simple,  i.e.  non-pastoral,  elegies  written 
on  friends  drowned  at  sea  —  to  wit,  George 
Turberville's  "  Epitaph  on  Maister  Arthur 
Brooke,"  and  Propertius's  elegy  on  Paetus. 
Making  all  allowances  for  Milton's  greater 
genius,  we  can  hardly  fail  to  perceive  the 
superiority  of  the  more  complex  over  the  more 
simple  form  of  lament. 

But  the  critics  frequently  shift  their  point  of 
attack  from  the  capabilities  of  the  pastoral 
form  to  express  emotion  to  the  sincerity  of  the 
grief  felt  by  Milton  himself.  "  Lycidas,"  they 
say,  lacks  sincerity,  and  hence  fails  to  make  a 
true  appeal,  because  it  has  not  and  could  not 
have  had  the  note  of  personal  sorrow  that  is 


134  JOHN   MILTON 

found  in  such  a  poem  as  "  In  Memoriam." 
Arthur  Hallam  was  Tennyson's  bosom  friend; 
Edward  King  had  been  promoted  over  Milton's 
head  at  college,  and  the  latter  did  not  even  men- 
tion the  sad  drowning  in  the  Irish  Sea  in  two 
contemporary  familiar  letters  to  Diodati.  But 
surely  one  does  not  need  to  be  intimate  with  a 
man  in  order  to  be  sincere  in  mourning  his  pre- 
mature taking-off.  Milton  knew  of  King  well 
enough,  and  he  was  aware  that  the  latter  was 
just  the  kind  of  man  that  was  needed  for  the 
ministry  of  the  Church.  "  Lycidas "  itself__is 
proof  sufficient  of  the  interest  Milton  took  in 
that  ministry,  and  of  the  scorn  he  had  for  its 
unworthy  representatives;  the  poem  is  equal 
proof  of  the  sincere  grief  its  author  felt  for 
the  loss  of  one  whom  he  had  known  and  ad- 
mired, and  whom  he  had  believed  destined  to  do 
a  great  work  within  the  Christian  fold.  There 
was  therefore  in  the  relations  of  the  two  men 
scope  for  personal  emotion  of  a  high  and  pure 
kind,  and  this  emotion  was  fused  by  Milton's 
artistic  skill  into  a  poem  which,  after  a  wide 
course  of  reading  in  the  class  of  poetry  to 
which  it  belongs,  I  have  little  hesitation  in  pro- 


WORKS  135 

nouncing  to  be  the   nnhlpst^elggy  in^Jiny  of   the 

greater  literatures.  If  it  is  not  sincere,  then  I 
am  at  a  complete  loss  to  acco.unt  for  the  true 
ring  of  such  supremely  flawless  verses  as  — 

"  For  Lycidas  is  dead,  dead  ere  his  prime, 

Young  Lycidas,  and  hath  not  left  his  peer," 
or 

"  But,  oh  !  the  heavy  change  now  thou  art  gone, 

Now  thou  art  gone  and  never  must  return," 
or 

"  Ay  me  !  I  fondly  dream 

*  Had  ye  been  there,'  ...  for  what  could  that  have 

done?" 
or 

"It  was  that  fatal  and  perfidious  bark, 

Built  in  the  eclipse,  and  rigged  with  curses  dark, 
That  sunk  so  low  that  sacred  head  of  thine,  " 

or,  finally,  the  whole  passage  beginning 

"Ay  me  !  whilst  thee  the  shores  and  sounding  seas 
Wash  far  away  " 

and  ending 

"  And,  O  ye  dolphins,  waft  the  hapless  youth." 

It  may  be,  indeed,  merely  my  own  imagina- 
tion that  discovers  in  these  verses  a  note  of 
personal  sorrow.  Read  casually  they  perhaps 


136  JOHN   MILTON 

strike  one  as  being'  beautiful  only,  but  read  and 
re-read,  and  studied  word  by  word,  they  reveal 
that  deep,  underlying  sincerity  that  must  be  the 
basis  of  all  perfect  *art.  Grief  worked  up  for 
the  occasion,  or  the  general  concern  one  feels 
at  hearing  of  the  death  of  a  brilliant  college- 
mate,  never  inspired  such  verses  or  such  a 
poem.  I  could  as  soon  be  persuaded  that 
Shakspere  did  not,  partially  at  least,  "  unlock 
his  heart"  in  his  divine  sonnets  as  that  Milton 
did  not  unlock  his  heart  in  the  equally  flawless 
and  divine  verses  I  have  just  quoted.  Flawless 
art,  I  repeat,  presupposes  the  deepest  sincerity, 
and  I  ameboid  enough  or  eccentric  enough  to 
maintain  that  there  are  verses  in  "  Lycidas  "  in 
which  Milton  has,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
struck  as  deep  a  note  of  personal  sorrow  as  has 
ever  been  struck  by  an  English  poet.  One  can 
naturally  no  more  prove  such  an  assertion 
than  one  can  prove  that  the  late  Professor 
Minto  was  mistaken  in  his  theory  that  the  sec- 
ond series  of  Shakspere's  "  Sonnets "  repre- 
sents a  sort  of  satiric  fancy  rather  than  a 
genuine  passion  for  a  fascinating  woman.  All 
one  can  say  is,  that  if  flawless  art  "  plays  such 


WORKS  137 

fantastic  tricks  before  high  heaven/*  it  is  in- 
deed enough  to  make  the  angels  weep. 

Turning  now  to  the  question  of  the  particu- 
lar poems  that  may  have  influenced  Milton 
in  writing  "  Lycidas,"  we  must  give  the  first 
place  to  the  three  great  pastoral  elegies  of 
the  Alexandrians  —  to  the  "  Song  of  Daphnis  " 
in  the  First  Idyll  of  Theocritus,  to  the  "  Song 
of  Adonis "  of  Bion,  and  the  "  Lament  for 
Bion  "  by  Moschus.  To  these  should  be  added 
the  Fifth  and  Tenth  Eclogues  of  Virgil. 

I  cannot  see  that  Propertius's  beautiful  elegy 
on  Paetus  or  Ovid's  on  Tibullus  was  at  all  in 
Milton's  mind.  Critics  have  cited  such  modern 
pastorals  as  the  "Alcon"  of  the  Italian  poet 
Castiglione  as  having  been  drawn  on  for 
imagery,  but  I  can  discover  nothing  that  both 
poets  could  not  easily  have  derived  from  their 
common  sources  of  inspiration.  This  seems 
to  be  true  of  Marot's  pastoral  on  the  death 
of  Louise  of  Savoy,  and  of  the  eclogue  that 
Spenser  modelled  on  it.  The  latter  poet's 
"  Astrophel "  may  have  had  a  slight  stylistic 
influence;  but  even  this  much  can  hardly  be 
said  of  Ludovick  Bryskett's  poor  pastoral  on 


138  JOHN   MILTON 

Sidney,  in  spite,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  of 
the  claims  put  forward  for  it  by  Dr.  Guest. 
Nor  can  I  think  that  the  pretty  elegies  and 
dirges  of  William  Browne  of  Tavistock  were 
specially  in  Milton's  mind  when  he  wrote, 
although  more  than  one  critic  has  traced  the 
influence  of  Browne.  It  is  true  that  Milton 
was  a  reader  of  Browne,  and  it  is  also  true 
that  Browne  lamented  in  a  touching  way  the 
death  of  a  drowned  friend ;  but  these  facts  do 
not  prove  conscious  imitation.  Turberville's 
epitaph  on  Arthur  Brooke,  the  translator  of 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  who  perished  by  ship- 
wreck in  a  way  that  reminds  one  strikingly  of 
the  death  of  King,  has,  in  spite  of  a  certain 
crudity,  more  in  common  with  "  Lycidas  "  than 
Browne's  laments  have.  The  stanza  with  the 
pathetic  invocation  to  Arion's  dolphin  brings  up 
immediately  one  of  the  finest  lines  in  "Lycidas," 
but  it  would  be  rash  to  affirm  that  the  stanza 
gave  birth  to  the  line.  In  short,  it  is  easy  to 
conclude  that  "  Lycidas  "  is  unique  among  mod- 
ern elegies,  whether  preceding  or  following ;  for 
it  would  be  hard  to  trace  any  marked  influence 
exerted  by  it  on  "  Adonais  "  or  "  Thyrsis." 


WORKS  1 39 

But  while  we  can  easily  dismiss  Milton's 
relations  to  modern  pastoral  poets,  we  should 
say  a  word  here  about  the  way  he  treated  his 
Alexandrian  masters.  In  the  first  place,  he 
followed  Virgil  in  dropping  the  refrain.  Sec- 
ondly, he  made  little  or  no  attempt  in  "  Lyci- 
das  "  to  paint  any  of  those  pretty  but  elaborate 
little  pictures  that  gave  idyllic  poetry  its  name. 
For  the  beautiful  invocation  to  the  nymphs 
(11.  50-62)  he  was  indebted  to  Theocritus  rather 
than  to  Virgil's  Tenth  Eclogue ;  but  his  sub- 
stitution of  British  for  classical  names  was  a 
proof  at  once  of  his  patriotism  and  of  his 
invariable  habit  and  power  of  bettering  what 
he  condescended  to  borrow.  Unlike  Moschus, 
he  saw  no  reason  to  reserve  to  the  last  the 
expression  of  his  personal  sorrow,  and  it  is 
needless  to  say  that  the  hopelessness  of  the 
Greek  in  the  presence  of  death  found  no  place 
in  his  verses. 

The  influence  of  his  classical  models  on  par- 
ticular lines  and  phrases  of  "  Lycidas "  is  too 
apparent  to  require  much  notice.  The  name 
"  Lycidas  "  itself  and  those  of  Damoetas, 
Amaryllis,  and  Neaera  are,  of  course,  borrowed 


140  JOHN   MILTON 

from  these  sources.  The  references  to  the 
hyacinth  "  inscribed  with  woe,"  to  the  grief  of 
the  flowers  for  Lycidas's  death,  to  the  mourn- 
ful echoes  of  the  caves,  all  suggest  the  Alex- 
andrian idylls;  and  Milton  himself  confesses 
the  source  of  much  of  his  inspiration  by  his  in- 
vocation to  "fountain  Arethuse  "  and  "smooth- 
sliding  Mincius,"  and  by  his  expression  "  Doric 
lay."  Minute  commentators  have  even  shown 
that  he  has  been  misled  into  making  the 
Hebrus  a  swift  river  through  his  reliance  upon 
a  phrase  in  Virgil  which  is  supposed  to  be 
a  misreading.  But  "  Lycidas  "  has  a  beauty 
and  passion  unknown  to  its  Alexandrian  pre- 
decessors, and  it  has  not  a  touch  of  their 
oriental  effeminacy  and  licentiousness. 

Something  must  now  be  said  about  the 
marvellous  rhythm  of  the  poem.  The  iambic 
pentameter  is  the  prevailing  line,  but  trimeters 
and  tetrameters  are  irregularly  introduced 
throughout  with  exquisite  effect.  The  rhythm 
is  varied,  and  flows  now  in  leaping  waves,  now 
in  long  rolling  billows  that  carry  all  before 
them,  like  the  surging  periods  of  "  Paradise 
Lost."  There  is  probably  no  short  poem  in  the 


WORKS  141 

language  the  rhythm  of  which  has  been  more 
deservedly  praised  and  studied,  or  more  de- 
spaired of  by  other  poets.  Milton's  mastery 
of  rhythm,  remarkable  from  the  first,  almost 
culminated  in  "  Lycidas,"  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  he  was  there  subjected  (practically 
for  the  last  time)  to  what  he  afterward  called 
"the  troublesome  and  modern  bondage  of 
riming."  There  is  nothing  in  the  unrhymed 
(or  rhymed)  portions  of  "  Comus  "  that,  to  my 
ear,  at  all  equals  in  majesty  and  splendor  of 
rhythmical  movement  the  passage  in  "Lycidas" 
that  begins 

"  Ay  me  !   whilst  thee  the  shores  and  sounding  seas  "  — 

and  perhaps  there  is  nothing  in  "  Paradise 
Lost"  that  excels  it.  But  it  is  the  rhymed 
structure  of  "Lycidas"  that  has  attracted  most 
attention,  because  it  is  almost  unique.  Three 
of  its  notable  peculiarities  may  be  pointed  out. 
In  jhe  193  verses^^there  are  10  _that  have  no 
rhyming  relations  with  others  in  their  vicinity. 
There  is  no  fixed  order  of  rhyme,  and  where, 
as  often  happens,  two  adjacent  verses  rhyme, 
they  sometimes  fail  to  form  a  couplet  in  the 


142  JOHN   MILTON 

strict  sense  of  the  word.  There  is  a  paucity 
of  rhymed  endings  (only  about  60  in  the 
poem)  which  shows  that  one  sound  and  its 
related  rhymes  do  duty  for  several  verses ; 
e.g.  11.  2,  5,  6,  9,  12,  14,  end  respectively  with 
"sere,"  "year,"  "dear,"  "peer,"  "bier,"  and 
"tear."  Other  peculiarities,  such  as  the  use 
of  assonance,  might  be  dwelt  upon,  but  the 
reader  may  observe  these  for  himself,  for  the 
main  question  that  concerns  us  here  is,  How 
did  these  peculiarities  originate  ?  This  ques- 
tion was  long  ago  indirectly  answered  by  Dr. 
Johnson,  when,  in  the  course  of  his  famous 
"Life,"  he  casually  remarked  on  the  fact  that 
Milton's  "  mixture  of  longer  and  shorter  verses, 
according  to  the  rules  of  Tuscan  poetry," 
proved  his  "  acquaintance  with  the  Italian 
writers."  Later  Dr.  Guest  tried  to  show  that 
an  irregularly  rhymed  pastoral  by  Ludovick 
Bryskett  on  the  death  of  Sidney  (which  made 
no  use  of  verses  without  rhyme  or  of  varying 
length)  had  been  in  Milton's  mind  when  he 
wrote  "  Lycidas "  ;  but  that  our  great  poet 
was  influenced  by  the  Italian  masters,  both  in 
his  arrangement  of  rhymes  and  in  his  alterna- 


WORKS  143 

tion  of  shorter  and  longer  verses,  will  be  ap- 
parent to  any  one  who  will  take  the  trouble  to 
analyze  the  choruses  of  the  "  Aminta  "  or  "  II 
Pastor  Fido,"  or  to  examine  a  treatise  on  Ital- 
ian metres.1 

The  reader  will  already  have  gathered  that 
there  has  been  much  difference  of  opinion 
with  regard  to  the  merits  of  "Lycidas."  Dr. 
Johnson  wound  up  his  curiously  inept  criticism 
by  remarking :  "  Surely  no  man  could  have 
fancied  that  he  read  '  Lycidas '  with  pleasure 
had  he  not  known  the  author."  The  cold  and 
judicious  Hallam  wrote  on  the  other  hand : 
"  It  has  been  said,  I  think  very  fairly,  that 
1  Lycidas '  is  a  good  test  of  real  feeling  for 
what  is  peculiarly  called  poetry." 2  Mark 
Pattison  practically  regarded  "  Lycidas "  as 
the  greatest  poem  in  the  language.  Dr.  Gar- 
nett  dissents  from  this  view,  holding  that  the 

1  Mr.  Verity  notes  that  Landor  also  saw  Milton's  metrical 
obligations  to  Tasso  and  Guarini,  and  refers  to  the  English 
critic's  collected  works  (1876),  iv.,  499. 

'2  "  I  have  been  reading  *  Comus  '  and  '  Lycidas '  with  won- 
der, and  a  sort  of  awe.  Tennyson  once  said  that  '  Lycidas ' 
was  a  touchstone  of  poetic  taste."  —  EDWARD  FITZGERALD  to 
Fanny  Kemble,  March  26,  1880. 


144  JOHN  MILTON 

beauties  of  the  poem  are  exquisite  rather  than 
magnificent,  and  that  as  an  elegy  it  has  been 
surpassed  by  "Adonais."  It  seems  hard  to 
justify  this  criticism.  Both  poems  contain 
exquisite  passages,  and  both  contain  magnifi- 
cent passages,  but  I  know  of  nothing  in 
"  Adonais "  that  is  so  exquisite  as  the  flower 
passage  in  "  Lycidas,"  or  so  magnificent  as  the 
speech  of  St.  Peter,  or  the  picture  of  the 
corpse  of  Lycidas  washed  by  "  the  shores 
and  sounding  seas."  Then,  again,  it  seems 
plain  that  Milton  understood  better  than  Shel- 
ley the  nature  of  the  art  form  in  which  they 
purposed  to  cast  their  thoughts.  Shelley's 
mind  was  too  hazy  to  enable  him  to  reproduce 
the  pellucid  beauty  of  his  _Greek  originals,  and 
his  personifications,  though  not  wanting  in 
power,  were  far  from  clear-cut.  This  is  not 
saying,  of  course,  that  the  "  Adonais "  is  not 
a  great  poem,  or  that  it  has  not  a  greater  his- 
torical interest  than  "  Lycidas,"  and  after  all 
any  literature  may  well  be  proud  of  possess- 
ing two  such  elegies. 

The   mention  of  the  speech  of  St.  Peter  re- 
minds   us,    however,    that    it    and    the    other 


WORKS  145 

"  higher  mood "  concerned  with  Apollo  and 
true  fame  have  given  the  critics  much  trouble 
because  they  do  not  seem  to  be  in  keeping  with 
the  plaintive  tone  of  the  normal  elegy. 

The  question  therefore  arises  —  "  Was  Milton 
necessarily  committing  an  artistic  blunder  when 
he  introduced  into  his  pastoral  elegy  ele- 
ments that  at  first  sight  seem  foreign  to  it?" 
This  question  had  practically  been  answered 
long  before  by  Virgil  and  those  of  his  succes- 
sors who  had  used  the  pastoral  for  political  and 
other  similar  purposes,  but  we  may  answer  it  for 
ourselves  after  a  brief  discussion  of  the  two 
passages  in  "  Lycidas "  that  have  excited  so 
much  animadversion. 

With  the  first,  beginning 

"  Alas  !  what  boots  it  with  uncessant  care," 

less  fault  has  been  found.  The  transition  is  not 
too  abrupt,  and  the  nobility  and  beauty  of  the 
verses  would  almost  justify  their  insertion,  even 
if  they  did  not  follow  naturally  on  the  mention 
of  Orpheus  —  the  son  of  the  muse  —  who  per- 
ished at  the  hands  of  the  ignoble  throng.  They 
are  not,  it  is  true,  the  soft  complaints  of  a  courtly 


146  JOHN   MILTON 

• 

lover  masquerading  as  a  shepherd,  nor  are  they 
the  exquisite  wail  of  a  ]%.&o,&y  fin-de-siecle  ballad- 
ist  who  has  retired  from  the  world  to  lament 
in  disgust  the  interest  men  take  in  everything 
except  his  fragile  poetry.  They  are  rather  the 
last  deep  sigh  that  Milton's  noble  bosom  will 
permit  itself  before,  in  the  consciousness  of 
a  high  and  pure  purpose,  it  is  bared  to  the 
assaults  of  an  alien  and  pitiless  world.  But  to 
ask  that  an  elegist  shall  not  sigh  so  deeply 
is  like  insisting  that  no  greater  poet  than 
a  Tibullus  shall  ever  touch  the  elegiac  flute, 
and  proclaiming  that  there  is  no  room  in  our 
poetic  hierarchy  for  a  Propertius. 

It  is  the  second  exalted  passage  introducing 
St.  Peter  mourning  over  the  degeneracy  of  the 
English  Church  that  has  caused  our  solicitous 
critics  most  pain.  The  introduction  of  Triton, 
the  message  of  ^Eolus,  even  the  episode  of  the 
river  Cam  were  allowable  enough  in  such  a 
pastoral ;  but  why,  ask  the  critics,  should  the 
bucolic  poet  turn  preacher?  Why  should  he 
blend  with  his  shepherd's  pipe  the  trumpet  of 
the  prophet,  even  though  he  blow  it  with  the 
might  of  an  archangel  ?  Perhaps  the  fact  that 


WORKS  147 

Milton  himself  saw  no  incongruity  in  his  pro- 
cedure will  seem  a  sufficient  answer  to  those 
of  us  who  believe  that  what  Shakspere  or 
Milton  have  joined  together  no  man  should 
lightly  put  asunder.  But  objectors  will  not  be 
satisfied  with  this ;  so  we  may  tell  them  that 
by  his  infusion  of  passion  and  scorn  Milton, 
like  Shelley  in  "  Adonais,"  has  given  an  inten- 
sity of  tone  to  his  elegy  which  even  Moschus 
failed  to  give  to  his  heartfelt  lament  for  Bion. 
He  has  given  it  a  higher  spiritual  significance 
than  Propertius,  with  all  his  sincerity  and 
power,  could  give  to  his  lines  on  Paetus.  He. 
has_ broken  loose  from  the  restraints  of  the 
pastoral  form  just  where  one  direct  passionate 
outburst  was  needed  to  give  the  proper  contrast, 
and  so  to  heighten  the  effect,  just  as  the  single 
sigh  or  groan  that  escapes  from  a  strong,  self- 
contained  mourner  is  supreme  in  its  effect,  and 
appears  to  emphasize,  not  only  the  grief  he  is 
enduring,  but  also  the  strength  with  which, 
except  for  one  bare  instant,  he  has  controlled 
that  grief.  The  passage  is  another  crowning 
proof  of  Milton's  power  of  blending  the  char- 
acteristics of  Greek  and  Hebrew,  and  it  is 


148  JOHN   MILTON 

natural  enough  when  the  conditions  of  the 
time  are  taken  into  account.  _If  Cambridge 
could  be  represented  as  mourning  in  person 
the  death  of  King  as  a  scholar,  surely  St. 
Peter  could  mourn  with  equal  propriety  the 
death  of  King  as  an  intended  priest.  With 
regard  to  the  details  of  the  speech  put  into 
St.  Peter's  mouth,  there  cannot  be  two  opinions. 

I  For  concentrated  scorn,  and  awful,  mysterious 
power  and  import,  the  speech  has  no  equal. 
It  is  to  be  noted  further  that  Milton  success- 
fully adapts  pastoral  language  to  his  high  pur- 
poses, and  that  he  manages  the  transition  from 
the  higher  to  the  lower  "  moods  "  with  consum- 
mate felicity.  If  these  claims  are  justified,  we 
are  in  a  position  to  assert  that  Milton,  by  his 
fusion  of  the  intensity  of  the  true  ode  with  the 
idyllic  beauty  and  tender  pathos  of  the  pastoral 
y£legy  proper,  has  modified  and  improved  an  old 
and  established  form  of  art.  But  one  could 
write  about  "Lycidas"  forever  and  not  exhaust 
the  subject,  so  it  will  be  as  well  to  cry  a  halt 
and  to  pass  to  a  brief  consideration  of  the  Latin 
elegies  that  culminate  in  the  "  Epitaphium 
Damonis,"  leaving  to  one  side  the  two  sonnets 


WORKS  149 

of  an  elegiac  cast,  which  cannot  well  be  con- 
sidered apart  from  their  companion  poems  in 
this  specially  elaborate  verse-form. 

The  Latin  elegies  will  not  demand  much  at- 
tention because,  with  the  exception  of  the  "  Epi- 
taphium  Damonis,"  they  do  not  differ  in  quality 
from  the  youthful  exercises  already  examined. 
Two  poems  in  the  "  Elegiarum  Liber"  are  true 
elegies  —  viz.  the  second  written^  at  the  age 
of  seventeen  on  the  death  of  the  Cambridge 
beadle,  and  the  third  written  about  the  same 
time  on  the  death  of  the  Bishop  of  Winchester. 
Even  if  they  had  been  done  in  English,  they 
would  have  been  remarkable  as  the  work  of  a 
schoolboy ;  in  their  flowing  Latin  they  are  even 
more  remarkable,  although  obviously  academical 
in  tone  and  matter.  It  is  not  a  little  curious 


that^ the  future  Puritan  should  in  his  youth  have 
celebrated  the  deatKs~~of~two  prelates  irr  ap- 
parently  sJncj^jgffusionT  The~  tribute^lxTthe 
Bishop  of  Winchester  contains  a  short  descrip- 
tion of  the  flight  of  the  angels  bearing  the  soul 
of  the  bishop  toJi^aveElSEIc^-^uggests  compar- 
ison  with^Cowley's  similar  verses  with  regard 
to  Crashaw.  The  advantage  lies  with  Cowley, 


ISO  JOHN   MILTON 

but  the  boyish  dream  of  St.  Cuthbert  touches 
us  more  than  the  vision  of  either  poet. 

The  first  poem  of  the  collection  entitled  "Syl- 
varum  Liber"  is  an_ode  in  alcaics  lamenting 
the  death  of  the  Vice-Chancellor,  a  physician. 
It  too  was  written  in  Milton's  seventeenth  year, 
and  is  creditable  to  his  genius  in  spite  of  its 
classical  commonplaces.  The  next  poem  but 
one  of  the  same  collection  is  the  second  of  the 
prelatical  elegies,  being  an  ode  in  iambic  trim- 


btejrs  on  the  death  of  theBisHop  of  Ely.  This 
tribute  was  written  shortly  after  that  to  the 
Bishop  of  Winchester,  and  in  it  the  Prelate 
himself  makes  a  long  speech  which  contains 
a  good  description  of  the  passage  of  his  soul 
through  the  stars. 

But  it  is  the  last  of  Milton's  Latin  elegies, 
the  famous  "  Epitaphium  Damonis,"  that  alone 
demands  serious  consideration. 

This  is  a  pastoral  following  the  Alexandrian 
pattern  more  closely  than  does  "  Lycidas,"  and, 
as  was  natural,  it  is  a  tenderer  poem  than  the 
latter.  In  poetic  beauty  it  ranks  above  all 
Milton's  elegiac  verse  except  "  Lycidas  "  ;  and, 
indeed,  above  most  of  the  elegies  ever  written 


WORKS  1 5 1 

by  Englishmen.  It  has  been  frequently  pointed 
out  that  the  great  merit  of  Milton's  Latin  verse, 
when  at  its  best,  lies  not  in  its  technical  skill, 
although  that  is  great,  but  in  the  fact  that  the 
foreign  medium  cannot  obscure  the  intense  feel- 
i  ig  of  the  poet.  'This  is  abundantly  shown  in 


the  "  Epitaphium  Damonis,"  which  is  so  great 
a  poem  that  one  can  but  regret,  with  Mr.  Pat- 
tison,  that  being  in  Latin  it  is  unfortunately 
"inaccessible  to  uneducated  readers." 

Like  its  Alexandrian  and  Roman  models  it 
is  written  in  hexameters,  and  not  in  the  elegiac 
couplet.  It  has  the  refrain 

"  Ite  domum  impasti,  domino  iam  non  vacat,  agni."1 

It  begins  by  invoking  the  Sicilian  nymphs, 
and  by  recalling  the  elegies  on  Daphnis  and 
Bion.  It  abounds  in  classical  names  and 
allusions,  and  is  minutely  pastoral  in  its  lan- 
guage and  incidents  —  much  more  so  than 
"  Lycidas."  Lastly,  and  especially,  it  follows 
its  models  by  showing  the  proper  idyllic  touch 

1  Thus  rendered  by  Cowper :  — 

"  Go,  seek  your  home,  my  lambs ;  my  thoughts  are  due 
To  other  cares  than  those  of  feeding  you." 


152  JOHN   MILTON 

—  the  imitation  of  the  Alexandrian  pictorial 
masters  in  the  exquisite  description  of  the 
goblets  ("  pocula ")  given  to  the  poet  by 
his  Neapolitan  friend  Manso.  The  strain  of 
personal  loss  is  present  throughout,  especially 
in  the  pathetic  lines  in  which  Milton's  visit 
to  Rome  is  deplored  because  it  kept  him  from 
the  bedside  of  his  friend;  and  although  there 
are  no  such  rises  to  "higher  moods"  as  in 
"  Lycidas,"  we  are  gratified  by  such  auto- 
biographical touches  as  the  lines  that  tell  us 
of  the  contemplated  abandonment  of  Latin 
verse  as  a  vehicle  of  expression,  and  of  the 
proposed  Arthurian  epic  mentioned  also  in 
"  Mansus,"  which,  alas  !  was  never  written.  In 
fine,  the  "  Epitaphium  Damonis "  is  a  great 
pastoral  elegy,  in  which  Milton  fused  his  love 
and  knowledge  of  the  classics  with  his  love  for 
Diodati  and  England,  and  with  his  noble  sense 
of  his  own  high  mission,  into  a  poem  which 
ought  to  be  studied  even  if  one  has  to  learn 
Latin  in  order  to  read  it.  "  Fictitious  bucoli- 
cism  "  the  poem  may  exhibit,  but,  in  the  words 
of  Mr.  Pattison,  this  "  is  pervaded  by  a  pathos 
which,  like  volcanic  heat,  has  fused  into  a  new 


WORKS  153 

compound  the  dilapidated  debris  of  the  Theoc- 
ritean  world." 

Particular  criticism  is  probably  unnecessary, 
but  I  may  suggest  a  comparison  of  the  closing 
lines  descriptive  of  Diodati's  reception  in  Para- 
dise with  the  similar  close  of  "  Lycidas,"  and 
I  cannot  forbear  pointing  out  the  pathos  and 
felicity  of  these  verses  :  — 

"  Vix  sibi  quisque  parem  de  millibus  invenit  unum, 
Aut  si  sors  dederit  tandem  non  aspera  votis, 
Ilium  inopina  dies,  qua  non  speraveris  hora, 
Surripit,  aeternum  linquens  in  saecula  damnum." 

These    have    been    Englished    by   Cowper    as 
follows :  — 

"  We  scarce  in  thousands  meet  one  kindred  mind, 
And  if  the  long-sought  good  at  last  we  find, 
When  least  we  fear  it,  Death  our  treasure  steals, 
And  gives  our  heart  a  wound  that  nothing  heals." 

But    the    only   man    to    translate    these    lines 
properly  was  Milton  himself. 

The  "  Epitaphium  Damonis "  was  not  only 
Milton's  last  important  Latin  poem ;  it  was 
also,  as  we  have  seen,  his  last  real  elegy. 
In  the  turmoil  of  public  and  the  sorrows  of 


154  J°HN    MILTON 

private  life,  his  mighty  spirit  was  to  find  other 
and  higher  work  to  perform  for  "the  great 
Task-master's  eye."  That  work  will  be  spoken 
of  in  the  chapters  that  follow ;  here  the  hope 
may  be  expressed  that  no  reader  will  suffer 
himself  to  be  so  dazzled  by  the  splendor  of 
the  poetical  achievements  of  Milton's  old  age 
(and  dazzled  he  will  be  if  he  approach  it  with 
a  mind  trained  in  the  principles  of  sound  criti- 
cism and  unaffected  by  the  shallow  and  un- 
cultured revolt  against  classical  standards  of 
excellence  that  is  so  rife  at  present)  as  to  be 
blind  to  the  charm,  the  blended  grace  and 
power  that  mark  the  noble  poems  of  his 
youth.  Great  even  to  sublimity  is  the  Milton 
of  "  Paradise  Lost," 

"  from  the  cheerful  ways  of  men, 
Cut  off." 

Great,  too,  and  matchless  in  charm  is-  the 
Milton  of  "  Lycidas," 

"  With  eager  thought  warbling  his  Doric  lay." 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    PROSE    WORKS 

QUITE  recently  Mr.  Gosse,  in  his  admirable 
short  history  of  English  literature,  has  ex- 
pressed a  doubt  whether  people  really  can 
admire  Milton's  prose.  Some  years  ago  Mr. 
Lowell  declared  that  his  prose  had  "  no  style, 
in  the  higher  sense";  that  his  sentences  were 
often  "loutish  and  difficult";  that  he  was  care- 
less of  euphony ;  that  he  too  often  blustered, 
et  cetera.  Nearly  all  critics  have  admitted  the 
splendor  of  his  best  passages,  but  have  has- 
tened immediately  to  qualify  their  praises  by 
animadverting  upon  his  clumsy  syntax,  his  lack 
of  coherence,  his  coarseness,  his  malignity,  his 
want  of  humor,  and  the  like.  Most  of  these 
charges  have,  indeed,  a  basis  of  truth,  which 
makes  them  difficult  to  refute  ;  but  like  much 
other  current  criticism  they  do  their  object  gross 
injustice.  In  reality  Milton  is  a  great  prose 


156  JOHN   MILTON 

writer,  perhaps  the  greatest  in  our  literature; 
but  his  greatness  will  never  emerge  from  criti- 
cism that  is  chiefly  negative.  It  may  be  a  rash 
claim  to  make,  yet  I  will  be  bold  enough  to 
maintain  that,  when  all  allowances  are  made, 
the  prose  works  of  Milton  contain  the  noblest 
and  most  virile  English  that  can  be  found  in 
our  literature,  and  that  this  is  true,  not  merely 
of  detached  passages  of  the  "  Areopagitica " 
alone,  but  of  the  mass  of  his  writings.  Such  a 
claim  cannot,  of  course,  be  made  good  here  or 
elsewhere ;  but  it  will  be  disputed  with  a  posi- 
tiveness  inversely  proportional  to  the  dispu- 
tants' study  of  Milton's  controversial  tracts.1 

The  phrase,  just  used  contains  in  itself  many 
of  the  reasons  for  Milton's  failure  to  take  his 
proper  rank  as  a  prose  writer.  As  a  rule  Mil- 
ton wrote  as  a  prose  pamphleteer  and  advocate, 
and  neither  his  matter  nor  his  manner  is  calcu- 
lated to  please  readers  whose  minds,  indurated 
by  preconception  and  prejudice,  cannot  play 
about  the  subjects  he  discusses.  A  partisan  of 

1  Unless,  of  course,  the  critic  has  a  theory  to  prove,  as  was 
Mr.  Pattison's  case,  who,  in  his  treatment  of  the  prose  works, 
is  distinctly  biassed. 


WORKS  157 

the  Stuarts,  a  devotee  of  liturgies,  a  reader 
of  over-delicate  sensibilities,  will  be  almost  cer- 
tainly unable  to  judge  Milton  fairly.  Even 
those  who  agree  with  him  in  religious  and  po- 
litical matters  will  be  generally  incapable  of 
getting  rid  of  the  effects  of  their  present  envi- 
ronment and  dealing  with  him  with  that  sym- 
pathy which  is  absolutely  indispensable  to  all 
true  criticism.  As  manners  have  improved, 
controversy  has  ceased  to  please ;  therefore  it 
requires  considerable  effort  to  shake  off  our 
prepossessions  sufficiently  to  get  the  proper  aes- 
thetic effect  of  Milton's  writings.  If,  however, 
we  can  imagine  ourselves  fighting  for  an  ideal 
state  and  an  ideal  religion,  rejoicing  in  over- 
coming a  doughty  adversary,  advocating  liberty 
of  thought  and  expression,  promulgating  a  new 
system  of  education,  —  in  short,  if  we  can  make 
ourselves  ideal  partisans  of  some  great  cause, 
we  shall  then  be  able  to  delight,  not  merely  in 
Milton's  exalted  passages,  but  in  the  general 
vigor  of  his  style,  in  the  weight  and  dignity 
of  his  learning,  in  his  thunderous  wrath,  in  the 
sharpness  of  his  satire,  in  the  marvellous  vari- 
ety and  abundance  of  his  vocabulary,  and  in 


158  JOHN   MILTON 

the  thoroughly  direct  and  masculine  tone  of  his 
thought.  In  other  words,  we  must  steep  our- 
selves in  the  Miltonic  spirit  before  we  can 
begin  to  realize  how  far  Milton  surpasses  all 
competitors  in  strength  and  nobility  as  well  as 
how  far  he  possesses  other  qualities  of  style, 
such  as  charm  and  lucidity,  usually  denied  him. 
We  shall  surely  not  comprehend  him  if  we  at- 
tempt to  judge  him  from  the  "  Areopagitica " 
or  from  a  volume  of  specimens ;  yet  it  is  to 
be  feared  that  this  is  what  many  critics  have 
unhesitatingly  done. 

The  prose  writings  divide  themselves  natu- 
rally and  easily  into  four  groups.  First,  the  five 
anti-prelatical  tracts  of  1641-1642;  secondly, 
the  four  divorce  tracts  of  1643-1645  ;  thirdly, 
the  political  pamphlets  from  1649-1660,  eleven 
in  number  unless  the  "  Areopagitica  "  be  added 
to  make  the  full  dozen;  fourthly,  the  miscel- 
lanies, including  the  letters,  state  and  pri- 
vate, the  Grammar  and  the  Logic,  the  histories 
of  Britain  and  Muscovy,  the  "  De  Doctrina 
Christiana,"  and  another  ecclesiastical  pam- 
phlet, the  letter  to  Hartlib  on  Education,  and 
one  or  two  short  and  unimportant  publications. 


WORKS  159 

These  four  groups  we  may  now  characterize 
briefly. 

The  titles  of  the  ecclesiastical  tracts  are  not 
alluring,  running  as  they  do :  "  Of  Reformation 
touching  Church  Discipline  in  England,"  "Of 
Prelatical  Episcopacy,"  "Animadversions  upon 
the  Remonstrant's  Defence  against  Smectym- 
nuus,"  "  The  Reason  of  Church  Government 
urg'd  against  Prelaty,"  "  Apology  against  a 
Pamphlet  called  A  Modest  Confutation  of  the 
Animadversions,  etc."  The  form  in  which 
their  author  gave  them  to  the  world  is  no  more 
alluring.  They  will  always  be  heavy  pam- 
phlets, for  even  the  resources  of  the  modern 
printer  cannot  prevail  against  long  paragraphs 
and  defective  chapter  divisions.  Yet  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  seven  more  glorious  para- 
graphs can  be  found  in  literature  than  those 
that  close  the  first  tract,  or  whether  there  is 
extant  a  more  superb  autobiographical  passage 
than  that  contained  in  the  preface  to  the  sec- 
ond book  of  the  "  Reason  of  Church  Govern- 
ment urg'd  against  Prelaty." 

It  is  obviously  impossible  to  analyze  these 
pamphlets  here,  but  it  may  be  remarked  that  a 


160  JOHN   MILTON 

careful  study  of  them  reveals  the  fact  that  Mil- 
ton is  more  at  home  in  historical  and  scholarly 
disquisitions  than  in  the  practical  application  of 
his  principles,  which  are  always  of  a  root  and 
branch  order.  Being  an  idealist,  he  cannot 
compromise;  being  Milton,  he  is  absolutely  re- 
gardless of  consequences.  But  he  is  none  the 
less  a  weighty  and  well-girt  reasoner.  Even 
when  he  is  dealing  with  such  a  scholar  as 
Archbishop  Usher,  he  proves  himself  no  mean 
antagonist  in  his  use  of  patristic  learning,  and 
against  Bishop  Hall  he  is  actually  nimble  to  the 
point  of  indecorousness  in  his  movements.  He 
ascends  and  descends  all  the  grades  of  parti- 
sanship from  that  of  the  prophet  to  that  of  the 
scolding  fishwife ;  but  perhaps  only  in  one  in- 
stance, that  unfortunate  one  of  the  episcopal 
hose,  does  he  cease  entirely  to  be  the  powerful 
advocate  of  a  dignified  cause. 

That  cause  —  the  cutting  off  of  episcopacy 
and  the  approximation  of  the  English  Church 
to  that  of  Geneva  —  may  not  appeal  to  many  of 
us  now,  but  has  little  to  do  with  the  power  of 
Milton's  style.  The  subject  is  at  least  as  inter- 
esting as  that  of  Bossuet's  most  famous  funeral 


WORKS  l6l 

oration,  and  if  the  style  is  great  and  we  are 
lovers  of  style,  we  should  surely  take  the  time 
to  read  the  tracts.  But  what  of  the  style?  — 
for  we  may  discuss  it  as  fittingly  in  connection 
with  these  pamphlets,  which  exhibit  it  fully,  as 
we  should  be  able  to  do  on  completing  the  total 
body  of  the  prose  writings. 

As  we  have  seen,  many  of  the  charges 
brought  against  Milton's  prose  style  must  be 
partly  admitted.  He  is  turgid,  but  he  is  also 
past  master  of  the  potent  phrase.  Not  only  his 
sentences,  but  often  his  paragraphs,  are  loose 
because  he  does  not  pay  sufficient  attention  to 
such  an  elementary  matter  as  the  unity  of  sub- 
ject. But  this  general  looseness  of  structure 
corresponds,  of  course,  with  Milton's  looseness 
of  thought,  which  in  turn  is  due- not  to  his  lack 
of  logic  or  power  of  cogent  reasoning  —  he  can 
be  as  logical  and  cogent  as  he  pleases  —  but  to 
the  fulness  of  his  erudition  and  to  the  main 
purpose  of  his  controversial  writings,  i.e.  to 
his  design  to  overwhelm  his  adversaries  and 
sweep  away  his  readers  by  the  mass  and  vol- 
ume of  his  utterance.  It  is  a  great  mistake  to 
suppose  that  Milton  did  not  know  how  to  us!e 


1 62  JOHN   MILTON 

the  short  sentence,  or  that  he  was  unacquainted 
with  the  advantage  of  the  English  over  the 
Latin  idiom  for  the  purposes  of  the  writer  who 
aims  at  a  swift  and  strong  expression  of  his 
ideas.  Much  of  his  prose  is  anything  but  the 
stiff,  splendidly  brocaded  texture  that  many  of 
the  critics  lay  stress  on ;  much  of  it  is  anything 
but  the  loose,  interminably  flowing  robe  with 
which  many  of  us  imagine  that  he  continually) 
enfolded  himself.  The  fact  is  that  Milton's 
prose  structure,  like  his  poetic,  constantly  im- 
presses the  student  with  its  variety  and  mobil- 
ity. His  diction,  too,  is  at  times  far  from  stiff, 
pedantic,  and  Latinistic,  although  his  profound 
Latin  studies  plainly  influenced  it.  I  know  of 
no  English  writer,  unless  it  be  Shakspere,  who 
gives  one  such  a  sense  of  a  copious,  nay,  in- 
exhaustible, vocabulary.  Perhaps  this  is  due, 
as  critics  have  remarked,  to  rapidity  of  circula- 
tion rather  than  to  the  actual  quantity  of  differ- 
ent words  employed ;  but  it  is  the  effect,  not 
the  cause,  that  concerns  us,  and  the  effect  is 
that  of  an  almost  unbounded  affluence  of  words. 
From  the  lowest  grade  of  the  scurrilous  and  vul- 
gar, up  to  the  most  technically  erudite  and  po- 


WORKS  163 

etically  sonorous  of  terms,  his  range  is  free  and 
sovereign.  He  can  scold  like  a  shrew,  he  can 
discourse  like  an  archangel ;  and  if  he  indulges 
too  much  in  the  first  role,  owing  to  the  temper 
of  his  times,  and  often  to  the  nature  of  his  task 
and  the  character  of  his  adversary,  we  should 
never  forget  that  he  is  the  only  mortal  man 
who  has  ever  been  able  to  bear  the  weight  of 
the  second.  This,  I  think,  is  his  chief  distinc- 
tion —  whether  in  his  prose  or  in  his  poetry  he 
is  the  noblest  of  writers.  I  will  go  farther  and 
say  that  in  his  prose  he  is  the  most  overwhelm 
ingly  strong  of  writers,  and  that  I  am  bound  to 
prefer  superlative  nobility  and  strength  to  all 
other  qualities  of  style,  or  the  sum  of  them. 
Critics  like  Mark  Pattison  may  set  Hooker 
above  him  for  one  reason  and  Bacon  for  an- 
other; but  neither  Hooker,  nor  Bacon,  nor 
Jeremy  Taylor,  nor  Sir  Thomas  Browne  (whom 
Lowell  avouches  in  this  connection),  nor  any 
subsequent  writer  of  English,  gives  me  the  sense 
of  sublime  power  and  variety  and  nobility-^7 
of  eloquence  in  its  highest  meaning,  that  po4- 
sesses  me  when  I  read  the  prose  of  Milton. 
Regular  it  is  not,  in  the  way  that  we  properly 


A 


1 64  JOHN  MILTON 

demand  of  modern  prose  with  its  multiplicity 
of  duties ;  it  has  not  the  clarity,  the  neatness, 
the  precision  of  the  French ;  it  does  not  com- 
bine subtle  charm  and  picturesqueness  and  brill- 
iancy as  does  the  prose  of  a  writer  like  Chateau- 
briand ;  but  it  is  better  than  all  this,  better  than 
the  stately  periods  of  De  Quincey  or  the  regal 
march  of  Gibbon,  better  than  the  vigor  of  Macau- 
lay  or  the  beauty  of  Ruskin  or  the  quiet  force 
of  Newman  —  it  is  either  the  utterance  of  a 
demigod  or  the  speech  of  an  angel.1 

1  It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  the  above  praise  will  be 
deemed  less  than  dithyrambic  by  any  reader  who  has  not  fairly 
soaked  himself  in  Milton's  prose;  neither  is  it  to  be  expected 
that  I  should  analyze  the  prose  writings  here  in  order  to  try  to 
prove  my  point,  or  that  readers  who  desire  to  investigate  for 
themselves  will  be  easily  induced  to  study  them  in  their  present 
unattractive  and  almost  inaccessible  or  rather  inabordable  form. 
Under  these  circumstances  I  shall  resort  to  the  expedient  of 
referring  in  this  lengthy  note  to  certain  passages  of  the  tractate 
"  Of  Reformation,"  which  more  or  less  bear  out  some  of  the 
contentions  made  above. 

The  twentieth  paragraph  of  Book  I.  contains  six  short 
sentences  with  the  cumulative  effect  Macaulay  used  to  aim  at. 
It  should  be  noticed  in  this  connection  that  Milton's  wide 
use  of  the  relative  is  one  of  the  chief  syntactical  reasons  for 
his  obscurity,  and  that  frequently  his  sentences  are  long  only 
because  of  faulty  punctuation.  A  little  familiarity  with  his  style 
will,  however,  speedily  minimize  the  effects  of  these  hindrances. 


WORKS  165 

The  matter  of  Milton's  second  group  of 
tracts  is  probably  as  little  attractive  to  most 
people  as  that  of  his  first,  nor  is  his  manner 

That  Milton  could  use  vigorous,  unpoetic,  nay,  unacademic 
English  when  he  chose,  is  plain  from  such  sentences  or  portions 
of  sentences  as  these :  — 

The  bishops  "  suffered  themselves  to  be  the  common  stales, 
to  countenance  with  their  prostituted  gravities  every  politic 
fetch  that  was  then  on  foot." 

"  It  was  not  of  old  that  a  conspiracy  of  bishops  could  frus- 
trate and  fob  off  the  right  of  the  people." 

"  So  have  they  hamstrung  the  valor  of  the  subject  by  seek- 
ing to  effeminate  us  all  at  home." 

Such  sentences  could  be  multiplied  indefinitely,  but  not 
more  so  than  noble  passages.  The  close  of  the  whole  tract  has 
been  referred  to  in  the  text,  but  one  never  knows  when  Milton 
is  going  to  break  out  into  a  sublime  strain,  or  indeed  into  some 
exquisite  collocation  of  sounds  like  the  following,  which  makes 
one  smile  at  Mr.  Lowell's  remark  about  the  lack  of  euphony : 
"  But  he  [God],  when  we  least  deserved,  sent  out  a  gentle  gale 
and  message  of  peace  from  the  wings  of  those  his  cherubims 
that  fan  his  mercy-seat."  The  New  England  critic  might,  one 
would  think,  have  hesitated  to  set  up  his  ear  against  Mil- 
ton's, if  only  in  gratitude  for  the  following  sentences  about  his 
ancestors :  — 

"  Next  what  numbers  of  faithful  and  free-born  Englishmen, 
and  good  Christians,  have  been  constrained  to  forsake  their 
dearest  home,  their  friends  and  kindred,  whom  nothing  but 
the  wide  ocean,  and  the  savage  deserts  of  America,  could  hide 
and  shelter  from  the  fury  of  the  bishops.  O  sir,  if  we  could 
but  see  the  shape  of  our  dear  mother  England,  as  poets  are 


1 66  JOHN    MILTON 

of  reasoning  much  more  convincing.  In  his 
"Of  Reformation"  he  had  been  guilty  of  ar- 
guing that  because  St.  Martin  had,  after  his 
elevation  to  the  episcopate,  complained  of  a 
loss  of  spiritual  power,  therefore  God  plainly 
had  taken  a  "  displeasure  "  at  "  an  universal 
rottenness  and  gangrene  in  the  whole  [episco- 
pal] function.".  In  his  divorce  tracts  he  was 
capable  of  arguing  for  almost  unlimited  free- 
dom of  divorce,  with  scarcely  a  mention  of 
the  evils  that  would  ensue  to  the  family  thus 
broken  up.  Yet  neither  in  his  precipitant  in- 
ference from  one  particular  to  the  general,  nor 
in  his  selfish  presentation  of  the  divorce  ques- 
tion from  the  man's  point  of  view  alone,  was 
Milton  other  than  his  impetuous,  whole-souled 

wont  to  give  a  personal  form  to  what  they  please,  how 
would  she  appear,  think  ye,  but  in  a  mourning  weed,  with 
ashes  upon  her  head  and  tears  abundantly  flowing  from  her 
eyes  to  behold  so  many  of  her  children  exposed  at  once,  and 
thrust  from  things  of  dearest  necessity,  because  their  con- 
science could  not  assent  to  things  which  the  bishops  thought 
indifferent." 

Do  we  not  here,  and  in  countless  other  passages,  find  Milton 
standing,  to  make  use  of  his  own  noble  words,  on  "  one  of  the 
highest  arcs,  that  human  contemplation  circling  upwards  can 
make  from  the  globy  sea  whereon  she  stands  "  ? 


WORKS  167 

self.  He  was  incapable  of  intellectual  dishon- 
esty of  any  conscious  kind.  He  merely  saw 
certain  phases  of  his  subject  and  pressed  them 
home.  He  believed  thoroughly  in  the  deprav- 
ity of  bishops,  and  he  felt  deeply  the  need  of 
some  greater  freedom  in  marriage,  hence  it 
never  occurred  to  him  that  his  methods  of 
arguing  could  be  pronounced  disingenuous  or 
misleading.  He  was  a  zealous  Protestant,  and 
therefore  an  individualist,  that  is,  a  more  or 
less  strenuous  but  not  very  cautious  reasoner. 
Yet  it  is  idle  to  maintain  the  attitude  of  those 
critics  who  seem  to  think  that  Milton's  rea- 
soning in  ecclesiastical,  social,  and  political 
matters  was  chiefly  "sound  and  fury,"  or  that 
it  is  impossible  for  latter-day  readers  to  com- 
prehend and  sympathize  with  the  positions 
taken  by  him.  It  would  be  truer  to  say  that 
his  positions  are  always  intelligible,  if  not 
always  sound,  that  his  power  as  a  writer  is 
almost  beyond  praise,  and  his  character  one 
that  none  can  comprehend  without  respect 
and  admiration. 

The  best  of   the  divorce  tracts  is  the  first, 
"  The    Doctrine   and    Discipline   of    Divorce." 


1 68  JOHN   MILTON 

The  second,  "The  Judgment  of  Martin  Bucer 
concerning  Divorce,"  consists  mainly  of  trans- 
lations from  the  Latin  of  this  eminent  Protes- 
tant divine  of  the  age  of  Edward  VI.,  and 
of  Milton's  comments  thereupon.  "  Tetrachor- 
don,"  as  its  name  imports,  is  a  commentary 
on  the  four  chief  passages  in  Scripture  treat- 
ing of  marriage  and  its  annulment,  while 
"  Colasteriori "  is  likewise  self-explanatory  in 
its  title,  as  it  is  devoted  to  excoriating  cer- 
tain persons  who  had  been  rash  enough  to 
censure  Milton  for  his  "  licentious "  opinions. 
The  two  last-named  pamphlets  may  be  safely 
passed  over  by  the  general  reader,  for  the 
first,  although  calm  and  dignified,  is  dry 
through  the  nature  of  the  subject  and  the 
method  of  its  treatment ;  and  the  second  does 
not  afford  a  fair  measure  of  the  vigor  with 
which  Milton  could  expound  his  principles, 
although  it  does  give  a  fair  idea  of  his  abil- 
ity to  hector  an  adversary.  But  the  reader 
who  fails  to  read  the  first  tract  will  fail  to 
understand  Milton  in  his  capacity  as  an  ideal 
reformer  regardless  of  consequences.  His  mo- 
tives were  much  less  likely  to  be  misunder- 


WORKS  169 

stood  in  the  episcopal  controversy  and  in  the 
Royalist  muddle  than  in  his  attack  upon  indis- 
soluble marriages ;  but  Milton  was  of  all  men 
who  ever  lived  the  most  resolute  to  follow  his 
mind  whithersoever  it  might  carry  him.  He 
never  went  so  far  as  to  doubt  the  prime  ne- 
cessity of  Scriptural  warrant,  or  to  cease  to  rely 
upon  ancient,  especially  classical,  precedents ; 
but  this  fact,  while  it  necessarily  militates 
against  the  present  currency  of  his  ecclesias- 
tical and  political  writings,  should  not  blind  us 
to  the  further  facts,  that  for  his  time  he  was 
a  most  liberal  thinker,  and  that  no  age  has 
ever  produced  a  more  ideal  one.  It  is  this 
bold  ideality  that  forms  a  basis,  as  it  were,  to 
his  eloquence,  which  from  now  on  prompts 
him  to  appeal  in  clarion  tones  either  to  the 
Parliament  or  the  English  people  or  the  world 
at  large.  These  appeals,  whether  in  prefaces, 
as  is  the  case  with  the  first  two  divorce  tracts, 
or  in  a  special  plea  like  the  "  Areopagitica," 
or  in  scattered  passages,  as  frequently  in  the 
political  works,  furnish  in  the  main  the  noble 
prose  on  which  we  have  laid  such  stress ;  the 
strong  prose  is  furnished  by  the  body  of 


I/O  JOHN    MILTON 

nearly  every  book  or  pamphlet  that  proceeded 
from  his  pen.1 

The  ideality  of  the  divorce  tracts,  which  is 
seen  not  merely  in  Milton's  fearless  plea  for 
individual  liberty,  but  in  his  constant  assertion 
that  in  marriage  the  mind  counts  for  more 
than  the  body,  is  manifested  just  as  strikingly 
in  the  nobly  suggestive  if  impracticable  "  Of 
Education,"  and  in  the  far  more  effective 
"  Areopagitica,"  which  through  the  irony  of 
fate  is  almost  the  only  thing  that  keeps  him 
alive  as  a  prose  writer.  The  latter  tract, 
superb  as  it  is,  does  not  contain  his  noblest 
work ;  nor  perhaps  does  it  represent  his  ham- 
mering vigor,  his  impetuous  flow,  as  well  as 
"  The  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates " 
and  the  "First  Defence"  do,  or  his  compact 
strength  as  well  as  "  Eikonoklastes "  does. 
Still,  it  is  so  splendid  that  one  is  almost 
content,  as  is  the  case  with  Gray's  "  Elegy," 
not  to  attempt  to  disturb  the  public  in  a  pre- 
possession so  creditable  to  it. 

1  In  addition  to  the  prefaces  the  reader  should  study  also  Chap- 
ters III.  and  VI.  of  the  "  Doctrine  and  Discipline."  Chapters  VIII. 
and  XVII.  show  how  subtle  Milton's  reasoning  could  be  at  times. 


WORKS  I/I 

Passing  now  to  the  more  specifically  political 
tracts,  it  must  suffice  to  say  of  the  "  Tenure  " 
that  it  is  admirably  sincere  and  straightfor- 
ward, —  that  it  fairly  throbs  with  the  heart- 
beats of  an  ideal  son  of  liberty,  —  but  that  it 
might  well  be  more  succinct  in  its  logic  and 
more  true  to  the  promise  of  its  title.  Milton 
does  not  show  that  it  is  lawful  "  for  any  who 
have  the  power "  to  put  a  tyrant  to  death, 
but  he  thunders  splendidly  against  tyrants  and 
turncoat  Presbyterians,  though  not  personally 
abusing  Charles  I.,  and  gives  ample  proof  of 
his  own  sincerity  and  courage.  In  "  Eikono- 
klastes "  he  undertakes  a  harder  piece  of 
work,  but  one  in  which  he  is  far  more  suc- 
cessful, in  my  judgment,  than  most  critics 
have  allowed.  He  had  to  answer,  chapter  by 
chapter,  a  book  believed  by  thousands  to  have 
been  written  by  a  martyred  king  —  a  book 
which  was  practically  a  last  will  and  testa- 
ment. He  is  usually  represented  as  having 
done  it  in  a  "savage"  manner,  —  even  Pro- 
fessor Masson  allows  himself  to  use  the  term, 
—  but  this  is  quite  questionable.  It  would  be 
idle  to  argue  that  Milton  treated  Charles 


1/2  JOHN   MILTON 

gently,  but  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  he  held 
himself  in  —  a  hard  task  —  and  that  his  general 
treatment  of  the  king  and  his  book  was  little 
more  than  warrantably  sarcastic  and  severe,  it 
being  of  course  impossible  for  him  then,  or 
for  some  of  us  now,  to  look  upon  Charles  as 
other  than  an  evasive  and  dangerous  foe.  Mil- 
ton was  practically  a  republican,  and  most  of 
his  subsequent  critics  have  been  tinctured  with 
monarchical  prepossessions,  hence  his  attitude 
toward  Charles  has  seldom  been  fairly  pre- 
sented. Probably  Richard  Baron,  who  reissued 
"  Eikonoklastes "  in  1756,  went  too  far  in  his 
praises  of  it,  but  it  is  certainly  a  performance 
of  remarkable  vigor  and  level  strength  —  per- 
haps on  the  whole  the  most  uniformly  power- 
ful of  Milton's  prose  works.  The  arrangement 
as  a  commentary  mars  the  modern  reader's 
pleasure,  and  some  of  the  arguments  are  both 
tedious  and  weak,  but  it  was  no  credit  to 
Milton's  contemporaries  that  the  book  had  so 
little  temporary  or  permanent  effect.1 

1  The  general  vigor  of  style  and  matter  is  seen  clearly  in 
Section  VIII.  Section  X.  contains  some  excellent  sarcasm. 
Milton,  it  may  be  remarked,  may  not  have  lambent  humor,  but 


WORKS  173 

The  pamphlet  devoted  to  the  treaty  made 
by  the  Earl  of  Ormond  with  the  Irish  rebels 
hardly  deserves  our  notice,  although  the  Pres- 
bytery of  Belfast  must  have  wished  in  their 
secret  hearts  that  Milton  had  been  otherwise 
employed  than  in  writing  it ;  but  we  cannot 
afford  to  be  so  summary  in  our  treatment  of 
the  Reply  to  Salmasius  and  the  two  treatises 
that  grew  out  of  it.  The  moral  grandeur  dis- 
played by  Milton  in  preferring  to  lose  his  sight 
rather  than  that  his  beloved  and  then  to  him 
glorious  England  should  go  undefended,  has 
been  sufficiently  praised  elsewhere.  It  may 
be  as  well,  however,  to  remark  that  this  sacri- 
fice of  Milton's  is  not  a  figment  of  the  imagi- 
nation of  his  worshippers,  but  is  attested  to 

he  possesses  an  abundance  of  the  thunder-bolt  order.  For 
grim,  strong,  hitting-the-mark  shafts  of  scorn  he  has  few  or 
no  rivals.  Section  XXIV.  is  an  example  of  the  effects  of  that 
weakness  which  almost  invariably  attends  strong  prejudices. 
Section  XXV.  toward  the  close  shows  a  lack  of  charity  distressing 
to  modern  notions  ;  but  Sections  XXVII.  and  XXVIII.,  which 
conclude  the  book,  are  strong  and  dignified.  It  is  worth  while 
to  notice  that  the  so-called  attack  on  Shakspere  in  Section  I.  has 
been  entirely  misread,  and  that,  except  when  he  engages  in  vir- 
ulent personal  controversy,  there  is  little  occasion  for  Milton's 
readers  to  fault  the  taste  displayed  in  the  prose  works. 


1/4  JOHN   MILTON 

by  himself  in  that  splendid  autobiographical 
passage  which  gives  "  The  Second  Defence  of 
the  People  of  England "  its  chief  value.  As 
for  the  general  qualities  of  style  and  matter 
to  be  discovered  in  the  "  First  Defence "  or 
Reply  to  Salmasius,  in  the  "  Second  Defence," 
and  in  the  more  specific  attack  on  Morus  en- 
titled "Authoris  Pro  Se  Defensio,"  it  must  be 
confessed  that  the  general  vigor  with  which 
the  political  arguments  are  pressed  home  is 
matched  by  the  scorn  with  which  both  Sal- 
masius and  Morus  are  overwhelmed.  It  is 
idle  to  object  to  this  or  that  special  bit  of 
pleading,  or  to  urge  that  no  decent  man,  much 
less  a  Christian,  ought  so  foully  to  insult  an- 
other. It  is  equally  idle  to  claim  that  Milton 
had  no  right  to  reject  the  testimony  as  to 
Morus's  at  least  partial  innocence  of  the  au- 
thorship of  the  "  Regii  Sanguinis  Clamor," 
with  its  scurrilous  abuse  of  Milton.  This  criti- 
cism is  idle  simply  because  it  is  beside  the 
point.  Milton,  like  every  other  controversialist 
of  his  time,  was  aiming  to  overwhelm  his  ad- 
versary. His  weapon  was  a  club,  or  at  most 
a  battle-axe,  not  the  rapier  Pope  afterward 


WORKS  175 

used.  He  meant  to  fell  Salmasius  and  Morus, 
and  he  did  it  by  means  of  his  superior  learn- 
ing, his  thorough  belief  in  the  justice  of  his 
own  cause,  his  equally  thorough  contempt  of 
his  adversaries,  his  marvellous  power  of  writ- 
ing Latin  as  though  it  were  a  living  tongue, 
and  finally  the  vibrating  vigor  and  frequent 
nobility  of  his  thought.  Of  their  kind,  then, 
these  political  broadsides,  at  least  the  first  two, 
for  it  is  permissible  to  wish  that  the  second 
attack  on  Morus  had  been  withheld,  are  mas- 
terpieces, whether  the  present  age  cares  for 
such  literary  performances  of  vigor  and  scur- 
rility or  not.  We  need  neither  read  them  nor 
imitate  them;  but  to  pick  flaws  in  them  in 
accordance  with  modern  notions,  or  to  deny 
their  greatness  after  their  own  kind,  is  to  be 
distinctly  unjust. 

The  answer  to  Salmasius  suffers,  as  does 
so  much  of  Milton's  writing  in  answer  to 
books  and  pamphlets,  from  the  fact  that  he 
has  to  keep  track  of  his  adversary  and  to  in- 
dulge in  much  antiquarian  discussion.  This 
is  less  the  case  in  the  "  Second  Defence," 
which  is  consequently  much  oftener  quoted, 


1/6  JOHN   MILTON 

though  one  could  wish  that  at  least  the  close 
of  the  answer  to  Salmasius,  with  its  splendid 
warning  to  the  People  of  England,  were  as 
well  known  as  the  hyperbolical  praise  of  Chris- 
tina of  Sweden  in  the  "Second  Defence"  is. 
Milton  could  have  given  other  reasons  for  his 
praise  of  that  sovereign  besides  the  favor  she 
had  shown  his  retort  to  her  protege  Salma- 
sius, and  he  could  also  be  proud  of  the  fact 
that  his  noble  praise  of  Cromwell  had  closed 
with  full  as  noble  a  warning.  He  could  like- 
wise feel  that  if  he  indulged  in  a  retrospec- 
tive glance  at  his  own  life  in  reply  to  Morus's, 
or  rather  Du  Moulin's,  foul  charges,  he  did  it 
in  a  way  that  would  make  posterity  his  debtor, 
and  the  just  pride  of  even  Horace  and  Shak- 
spere  seem  almost  a  matter  of  slight  conse- 
quence in  comparison.  He  could  hardly  with 
justice  have  looked  back  with  such  content- 
ment on  any  passage  in  the  "  Pro  Se  De- 
fensio,"  but  he  may  be  excused  if  he  chuckled 
grimly  over  the  picture  he  drew  of  Bontia's 
scratching  the  cheeks  of  her  clerical  seducer. 
But  perhaps  it  will  be  well  to  dismiss  this 
subject  of  the  political  works  —  for  the  small 


WORKS  177 

tracts  on  the  "  Civil  Power  in  Ecclesiastical 
Causes,"  on  "  The  Likeliest  Means  to  Remove 
Hirelings  out  of  the  Church,"  and  the  "  Ready 
and  Easy  Way  to  Establish  a  Free  Common- 
wealth," while  interesting  as  throwing  light  on 
Milton's  broad  though  not  fully  complete  no- 
tions of  toleration,  his  preference  for  an  unpaid 
ministry,  and  his  aristocratic  hankering  for  a 
permanent  Council  of  State,  composed  of  the 
best  men,  are  not  of  prime  importance  —  by 
giving  in  outline  his  own  defence  of  his  habit 
of  indulging  in  strenuous  personalities  in  the 
course  of  his  controversies.  This  defence  can 
be  found  in  the  prefatory  remarks  to  the 
"  Animadversions  upon  the  Remonstrant's  De- 
fence against  Smectymnuus,"  and  although 
made  early  in  his  career,  will  apply  with  full 
force  to  his  later  works. 

The  defence  in  question  indicates,  perhaps, 
that  some  mild  remonstrance  against  his  vehe- 
mence had  been  made  to  Milton  by  discreet 
friends  rather  than  that  his  own  conscience 
had  been  troubled  in  the  matter.  When  he 
was  defending  his  principles,  Milton's  con- 
science was  always  serene,  such  divine  confi- 


1/8  JOHN   MILTON 

dence  did  he  have  in  his  own  integrity  of 
purpose  and  sureness  of  vision.  But  the  de- 
fence he  does  condescend  to  make  of  his  man- 
ner of  conducting  a  controversy  is,  on  the 
whole,  strong  and  well  put,  his  critics  being 
called  upon  to  explain  "why  those  two  most 
rational  faculties  of  human  intellect,  anger  and 
laughter,  were  first  seated  in  the  breast  of 
man,"  if  they  were  not  to  be  used  against  a 
"  false  prophet  taken  in  the  greatest,  dearest, 
and  most  dangerous  cheat,  the  cheat  of  souls." 
The  critics  might  have  replied,  indeed,  that 
certain  faculties  must  be  kept  under  by  the 
Christian  apologist  or  the  prudent  publicist, 
and  that  a  debater  ought  not  to  begin  by  beg- 
ging the  question ;  but  on  the  whole  a  majority 
of  Milton's  readers  probably  felt  that  he  had 
defended  himself  well,  if,  in  fact,  many  of 
them  in  that  age  of  rough-and-ready  contro- 
versy thought  that  he  needed  any  defence. 
And  we,  remembering  the  fact  that  he  de- 
fended none  but  great  causes  against  men 
whom  he  was  bound  to  regard  as  "  false  proph- 
ets," may  surely  forgive  him  all  his  errors  of 
taste,  because,  in  his  own  words,  he  unfeign- 


WORKS  179 

edly  loved  "  the  souls  of  men,  which  is  the 
dearest  love  and  stirs  up  the  noblest  jealousy." 

With  regard  now  to  the  miscellaneous  works 
we  can  afford  to  be  very  brief.  The  Logic 
and  the  Latin  Grammar  are  of  pedagogical  in- 
terest merely.  The  state  letters  and  papers 
and  the  small  amount  of  private  correspond- 
ence, together  with  the  academical  prolusions, 
are  all  stately,  and  full  of  historical  or  bio- 
graphical interest,  but  are  still  minor  composi- 
tions. "The  History  of  Muscovy"  is  but  a 
well-written  compilation,  and  the  "  History  of 
Britain "  —  most  of  which  was  probably  writ- 
ten during  his  schoolmaster  days  —  is  more 
important,  not  because  it  has  any  real  historical 
or  philosophical  value,  but  because  it  unfolds 
the  early  legends  of  British  history  and  the 
chief  events  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  annals  with 
a  literary  power  that  is  quite  remarkable.  Mil- 
ton had  erudition  and  wisdom  enough  to  have 
made  a  great  historian,  at  least  for  his  times ; 
but  events  determined  that  he  should  write 
only  a  picturesque  and  partly  satiric  narrative. 

The  tract  "  Of  True  Religion,  Heresy, 
Schism,  Toleration"  is  chiefly  noticeable  as 


180  JOHN   MILTON 

indicating  that  even  the  Milton  who  in  1660 
made  his  forlorn  plea  for  some  sort  of  republic 
was  forced  to  accommodate  himself  to  his 
times,  and  plead  for  a  toleration  not  compre- 
hending Roman  Catholics  as  the  only  one 
practicable  at  the  period,  or  indeed  sorting 
with  his  own  political  principles.  But  the 
treatise  "  Of  Christian  Doctrine "  is  of  more 
importance.  By  a  curious  chain  of  events  it  re- 
mained in  concealment  until  1823.  Two  years 
later  its  publication  at  the  expense  of  King 
George  IV.  gave  Macaulay  an  opportunity 
to  write  his  famous  essay,  but  produced  little 
effect  upon  Anglican  theology.  Milton  had 
worked  upon  the  book  for  many  years,  develop- 
ing his  ideas  from  a  most  minute  study  of  the 
Bible,  whose  ultimate  authority  he  respected 
as  much  as  he  was  careless  of  the  theological 
opinions  currently  derived  therefrom.  Those 
critics  are  doubtless  right  who  maintain  that  had 
the  treatise  been  published  during  Milton's  life- 
time it  would  have  created  quite  a  stir.  Com- 
ing to  light  about  a  century  and  a  half  later, 
and  being  almost  totally  devoid  of  eloquence 
and  charm,  it  has  proved  of  little  interest 


WORKS  l8l 

save  in  so  far  as  it  has  confirmed  the  impres- 
sion derived  from  "  Paradise  Lost"  that  Milton 
was  more  or  less  of  an  Arian,  and  has  shown 
that  he  was  bold  enough  to  oppose  Sabbatari- 
anism and  to  tolerate  polygamy  (nowhere  con- 
demned in  Scripture)  and  the  doctrine  of  the 
sleep  of  the  soul  between  death  and  the  res- 
urrection. Had  Milton's  high-church  and  Roy- 
alist opponents  but  suspected  him  of  such 
heresies,  they  might  have  rendered  him  still 
more  obnoxious  to  certain  not  over-intelligent 
classes  of  readers,  but  fortune  was  kind  to 
him  at  least  in  this  particular,  and  his  book  is 
not  sufficiently  read  now  to  endanger  him  with 
any  one.  Dr.  Garnett  has  practically  said  the 
last  word  about  the  matter  by  observing  that 
"if  anything  could  increase  our  reverence  for 
Milton,  it  would  be  that  his  last  years  should 
have  been  devoted  to  a  labor  so  manifestly 
inspired  by  disinterested  benevolence  and  haz- 
ardous love  of  truth." 

"  Disinterested  benevolence  and  hazardous 
love  of  truth  "  —these  are  indeed  the  character- 
istic notes  of  Milton  the  man,  just  as  strength 
and  nobility  are  of  Milton  the  writer.  They 


1 82  JOHN   MILTON 

emerge  from  any  careful  study  of  his  works, 
but  as  this  can  be  expected  of  but  few  in 
our  fast-reading  age,  it  is  fortunate  that  they 
emerge  also  from  many  a  quotable  passage. 
Where  in  English,  or  any  other  literature,  we 
may  well  ask,  can  the  strength  and  nobility  that 
emerge  from  this  paragraph  be  matched  or 
even  approximated  ?  — 

"Then,  amidst  the  hymns  and  hallelujahs 
of  saints,  some  one  may  perhaps  be  heard  of- 
fering at  high  strains  in  new  and  lofty  meas- 
ures, to  sing  and  celebrate  thy  divine  mercies 
and  marvellous  judgments  in  this  land  through- 
•out  all  ages;  whereby  this  great  and  warlike 
nation,  instructed  and  inured  to  the  fervent  and 
continual  practice  of  truth  and  righteousness, 
and  casting  far  from  her  the  rags  of  her  old 
vices,  may  press  on  hard  to  that  high  and 
happy  emulation  to  be  found  the  soberest, 
wisest,  and  most  Christian  people  at  that  day, 
when  thou,  the  eternal  and  shortly  expected 
King,  shalt  open  the  clouds  to  judge  the  sev- 
eral kingdoms  of  the  world,  and  distributing 
national  honors  and  rewards  to  religious  and 
just  commonwealths,  shalt  put  an  end  to  all 


WORKS  183 

earthly  tyrannies,  proclaiming  thy  universal 
and  mild  monarchy  through  heaven  and  earth ; 
when  they  undoubtedly,  that  by  their  labors, 
counsels,  and  prayers,  have  been  earnest  for 
the  common  good  of  religion  and  their  coun- 
try, shall  receive  above  the  inferior  orders  of 
the  blessed,  the  regal  addition  of  principalities, 
legions,  and  thrones  into  their  glorious  titles, 
and  in  supereminence  of  beatific  vision,  pro- 
gressing the  dateless  and  irrevoluble  circle 
of  eternity,  shall  clasp  inseparable  hands  with 
joy  and  bliss,  in  over  measure  for  ever."  l 

For  such  prose  what  words  of  mortal  praise 
are  adequate  ?  Organ-music  the  critics  call  it 
—  the  prose  of  a  poet  rather  than  strictly  poetic 
prose  —  sublime,  magnificent,  unrivalled  —  all 
these  phrases  and  epithets  have  been  applied 
to  it,  and  justly  —  but  I  can  compare  it  only 
with  something  I  never  heard  save  through 
Milton's  own  mouth  in  "  Paradise  Lost,"  the 
speech  of  Raphael,  the  archangel  of  God.  • 

1 "  Of  Reformation  in  England,"  Book  II.,  next  to  last  para- 
graph. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    SONNETS 

ALTHOUGH  the  entire  sonnet-work  of  Milton 
is  not  equal  in  value  to  that  of  Shakspere,  .or 
perhaps  even  to  that  of  Wordsworth,  if  the  lat- 
ter's  failures  be  overlooked,  there  are  reasons 
for  maintaining  that  he  is  the  most  masterly 
of  all  English  sonneteers.  For  melodious  sweet- 
ness, for  power  to  analyze  and  express  every 
phase  of  the  passion  of  love  Shakspere,  with 
his  exquisite  quatorzains,  is  unsurpassed ;  but 
Milton  is  equally  so  in  his  command  of  the 
stricter  sonnet  forms,  in  his  ability  to  extract 
noble  music  out  of  them,  and  in  his  adherence 
to  the  canon  that  the  sonnet  is  a  short  poem 
adapted  to  an  occasional  subject.  In  other 
words,  Milton  uses  the  sonnet  more  regularly 
and  at  the  same  time  more  nobly  than  any  other 
English  poet  does,  yet  he  has  also  shown  his 
originality  by  imparting  a  special  movement  of 
184 


WORKS  185 

his  own  to  the  stanza  by  omitting  the  pause 
after  the  eighth  line  that  is  necessary  to  the 
strict  Petrarchan  form.  Furthermore,  it  is  to 
be  observed  that  none  of  Milton's  sonnets  is 
poor,  that  at  least  two-thirds  are  great,  and 
that  two,  if  not  more,  are  _grand  —  as  grand 
perhaps  as  a  short  poem  can  ever  be.  It  is 
almost  needless  to  say  that  these  two  sonnets 
are  the  XVIIIth,  "  On  the  Late  Massacre  in 
Piedmont,"  and  the  XlXth,  "On  his  Blindness." 
Counting  the  Italian  sonnets  and  the  elon- 
gated sonnet  colla  coda,  "  On  the  New  Forcers 
of  Conscience,"  we  have  just  twenty-four  pieces, 
to  which  the  Italian  canzone  may  be  added  as 
a  twenty-fifth.  They  were  written  at  odd  times 
from  1630  to  1658,  the  first  ten  (or  eleven, 
counting  the  canzone),  as  usually  printed,  ap- 
pearing in  the  edition  of  1645,  the  remainder 
adorning  that  of  1673,  save  numbers  XV.,  XVI., 
XVII.,  and  XXII.,  which  were  suppressed  for 
political  reasons  until  1694,  when  Edward  Phil- 
lips gave  them  to  the  world  along  with  the  life  of 
his  uncle.  Their  occasional  composition  is  plain 
proof  that  Milton  used  them  as  a  means  of  giving 
a  brief  relief  to  his  overcharged  emotions,  espe- 


1 86  JOHN   MILTON 

cially  during  the  twenty  busy  years  when  he  was 
cut  off  from  elaborate  poetical  labors. 

The  first  eight  pieces,  counting  the  canzone, 
are  obviously  to  be  classed  as  juvenilia  so  far 
as  anything  of  Milton's  can  be  thus  classed. 
The  first,  "  To  the  Nightingale"  (1630?),  is 
characterized  mainly  by  charm,  and  hardly  de- 
serves Mr.  Pattison's  censure  for  the  "conceit  " 
that  it  contains.  Any  poet  might  have  used 
the  tradition  about  the  cuckoo  and  the  nightin- 
gale without  danger  of  becoming  a  Marinist. 
But  we  must  not  forget  to  be  grateful  to  Mr. 
Pattison  for  calling  attention  to  the  contrast 
Milton  offers  to  most  previous  (and  subsequent) 
sonneteers  by  his  noble  directness  of  phrase, 
his  total  avoidance  of  quip  and  quirk.  This 
straightforward  quality,  both  of  expression  and 
of  feeling,  is  fully  apparent  in  the  second 
sonnet,  "  On  His  Being  arrived  at  the  Age 
of  Twenty-three"  (1631),  which  is  as  nobly 
autobiographical  as  any  of  the  famous  prose 
passages. 

The  five  Italian  sonnets  and  the  canzone 
probably  date  from  the  continental  journey  and 
the  shadowy  Bolognese  love  affair.  They  are 


WORKS  187 

all  addressed  to  some  unknown  lady  save  one, 
and  that  tells  Diodati  how  much  she  has  en- 
slaved him.  It  is  hard  to  say  how  sincere  they 
are,  but  those  of  us  that  are  romantically  in- 
clined will  prefer  to  think  that  they  represent  a 
genuine,  if  transitory,  attachment.  Competent 
Italian  critics  have  detected  idiomatic  faults  in 
them,  which  was  to  be  expected.  Even  an 
amateur  can  notice  that  in  the  pauses  and  the 
arrangement  of  rhymes  in  the  sestet,  Milton  has 
not  followed  the  most  impeccable  models,  since 
three  out  of  the  five  sonnets  end  in  the  es- 
chewed though  not  prohibited  couplet.  But  in 
their  general  spirit  and  matter,  these  sonnets 
are  no  mere  exercises  in  a  strange  tongue ;  they 
are  real  poems  by  a  student  of  Petrarch  who 
has  caught  not  a  little  of  that  master's  subtle 
charm. 

Sonnets  VIII.,  XL,  XII.,  XV.,  XVI.,  XVII., 
XVIII.,  XXIII.,  and  the  sonnet  colla  coda, 
group  themselves  as  especially  concerned  with 
Milton's  life  under  the  Commonwealth.  The 
splendid  petition  bidding  "  Captain,  or  Colonel, 
or  Knight  in  arms"  not  to  lift  "spear  against 
the  Muses'  bower,"  serves  as  a  prelude  to  the 


1 88  JOHN   MILTON 

noble  encomiums  on  Fairfax,  Cromwell,1  and  the 
younger  Vane ;  the  sonnet  on  the  "  Massacre 
of  the  Vaudois  "  is  the  trumpet  note  of  the  col- 
lection ;  while  the  second  sonnet  to  Cyriack 
Skinner  is  the  proud  appeal  of  the  defeated 
champion  of  liberty  from  fickle  humanity  to  an 
all-seeing  and  all-powerful  God  of  Righteous- 
ness. Is  there  a  nobler  passage  in  literature 
than  these  lines  ?  — 

"  What  supports  me,  dost  thou  ask  ? 
The  conscience,  friend,  to  have  lost  them  overplied 
In  Liberty's  defence,  my  noble  task, 
Of  which  all  Europe  talks  from  side  to  side. 
This  thought  might  lead  me  through  the  world's  vain  mask 
Content,  though  blind,  had  I  no  better  guide." 

Compared  with  these  verses  the  three  satiri- 
cal sonnets  in  defence  of  his  divorce  tracts 
represent  a  much  lower  plane  of  thought  and 
execution,  but  even  these  are  fine  in  their  way, 
and  are  proofs  of  Milton's  astonishing  mental 
and  moral  vigor. 

Leaving  out  the  grand  sonnet  "  On  His 
Blindness,"  which  is  too  well  known  to  require 

1  Compare  the  great  prose  tributes  in  the  "  Second  Defence." 


WORKS  189 

comment  and  is  perhaps  the  best  single  illustra- 
tion of  the  sublimity  of  Milton's  character  to  be 
found  in  his  works,  we  have  in  the  remaining 
seven  sonnets  a  series  of  domestic  tributes  to 
friends,  two  of  them  being  elegiacal.  That  to  a 
M  Virtuous  Young  Lady,"  who  is  still  unknown, 
is  so  full  of  charm  that  it  ought  to  be  quoted 
whenever  Milton  is  attacked  for  his  supposed 
indifference  to  women.  Much  the  same  thing 
may  be  said  of  the  more  highly  sustained 
address  to  Lady  Margaret  Ley.  The  sonnet 
to  Lawes  on  his  book  of  Airs  reminds  us  of 
"Comus,"  and  of  the  fact  that  Milton  would  not 
let  politics  interfere  with  friendship.  That  to 
Mr.  Lawrence  shows  us  not  only  that  Milton 
loved  and  understood  young  men,  but  that  his 
puritanism  concerned  itself  with  the  spirit  of 
life,  not  with  such  externals  as  eating  and 
drinking.  The  first  sonnet  to  Skinner  is  per- 
haps fuller  of  moral  wisdom  than  any  other  of 
the  collection,  save  that  on  the  blindness  that 
must  have  fostered  the  wisdom. 

The  two  elegiac  sonnets  are  both  on  women, 
one  on  a  hardly  identified  Mrs.  Catherine 
Thompson,  the  other  on  his  second  wife,  Cath- 


IQO  JOHN   MILTON 

erine  Woodcock.  Although  the  sonnet  form 
has  been  often  used  for  elegiac  purposes  since 
the  days  of  Surrey,  its  elaboration  scarcely 
sorts  with  the  partial  abandon  required  of  the 
elegy,  and  is  better  adapted  to  encomiastic  or 
memorial  purposes.  Milton  had  in  view  both 
these  purposes  in  the  first  sonnet,  and  he  there- 
fore succeeded  excellently.  In  the  second,  for 
which  he  probably  had,  as  we  have  seen  and  as 
Hallam  long  ago  told  us,  an  Italian  model  in  a 
sonnet  of  Bernardino  Rota's,  affection  was  natu- 
rally mingled  with  praise ;  but  his  object  was 
rather  to  impart  a  note  of  noble  pathos  to  his 
poem  than  to  abandon  himself  to  the  typical 
elegiac  lament.  Hence  in  this  case  also  the 
elaborate  sonnet  form  suited  him  admirably  and 
he  produced  one  of  the  greatest  and  at  the  same 
time  the  most  affecting  of  his  poems. 

Space  is  wanting  for  any  careful  discussion 
of  the  sonnets  from  a  metrical  point  of  view, 
but  the  reader  can  easily  get  this  elsewhere. 
It  should  be  remarked,  however,  that  while 
Milton  is  very  careful  of  tbe  rhyme  arrange- 
ment of  his  octave,  he  is  not  over-meticulous 
about  his  sestet.  Only  five  have  the  best  Pe- 


WORKS  IQI 

trarchan  sestet  arrangement  of  three  rhymes, 
eight  run  on  two  rhymes,  regularly  interlaced, 
and  the  rest  are  more  or  less  irregular.  This 
implies  a  free  spirit  which  is  confirmed  by  the 
innovation  of  allowing  no  pause  at  the  end  of 
the  octave,  an  innovation  which  has  practically 
given  us  a  Miltonic  sonnet.  The  carrying  on 
of  the  sense  and  the  gathered  volume  of  sound 
that  result,  if  they  take  away  from  the  grace 
native  to  the  verse  form,  add  a  compensating 
unity  and  dignity,  and  produce  a  true  trumpet 
note.  It  is  probably  to  the  fact  that  his  subtle 
ear  taught  Milton  to  make  this  slight  change  in 
certain  of  his  sonnets  that  we  owe  the  further 
fact  that  the  sonnet  on  the  "  Massacre"  is  the 
grandest  in  our  literature. 

With  the  sonnets  we  may  conveniently  group, 
as  Masson  does,  the  miscellaneous  translated 
poems.  The  rhymeless  version  of  Horace's 
"  Quis  multa  gracilis  "  is  famous,  and  deservedly 
so.  It  is  neither  a  trifle,  as  Masson  thinks,  nor 
"overrated,"  as  Sir  Theodore  Martin  opined, 
for  it  is  one  of  the  few  successful  examples  in 
English  of  unrhymed  stanzas  that  charm.  But 
what  shall  be  said  of  the  translations  of  Psalms 


192  JOHN   MILTON 

Ixxx.-lxxxviii.,  in  eights  and  sixes,  made  by 
Milton  in  1648,  or  of  the  versions  in  various 
metres  attempted  in  1653?  Simply,  with  all 
due  respect  to  his  memory  as  a  consummate 
artist,  that  it  is  a  pity  he  ever  undertook  to 
rival  Sternhold  and  Hopkins,  Rous,  and  Barton. 
He  surpassed  the  framers  of  the  "  Bay  Psalm 
Book,"  but  he  also  furnished  the  single  instance 
of  his  poetic  life  in  which  the  Hebrew  element 
of  his  genius  was  not  balanced  by  the  Greek. 
Of  the  few  blank-verse  translations  scattered 
through  the  prose  writings  none  seems  note- 
worthy, although  there  is  a  touch  of  the  true 
Milton  in  one  of  the  versions  from  Geoffrey  of 
Monmouth. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

"PARADISE  LOST" 

WE  have  already  seen  that  Milton's  master- 
piece, begun  in  1658,  was  probably  completed 
by  1663,  but  not  published  on  account  of  the 
Plague  and  Fire,  until  1667.  In  view  of  the 
fact  that  its  composition  had  to  proceed  by 
blocks  of  lines  which  would  be  retained  in 
memory  until  some  amanuensis  or  chance 
friendly  visitor  could  jot  them  down,  it  cannot 
be'  said  that  slow  progress  was  made,  especially 
when  it  is  remembered  that  Milton's  genius 
seems  to  have  been  sluggish  during  the  warmer 
seasons.  If  the  presumption  hold  that  books 
and  maps  had  to  be  consulted  by  auxiliary 
eyes,  the  period  of  five  years  seems  almost 
short ;  but  it  is  not  clear  that  even  the  erudi- 
tion apparent  in  "Paradise  Lost"  or  the  traces 
of  other  authors  to  be  discovered  in  it,  might 
not  have  been  imparted,  without  the  interven- 
o  193 


194  JOHN   MILTON 

tion  of  books,  by  Milton's  well-stored  mind. 
It  is  indeed  highly  probable  that  much  of 
the  study  that  went  to  make  the  great  epic 
was  done  from  1640  to  1642.  There  are  extant 
four  drafts  of  a  drama  upon  "  Paradise  Lost " 
that  date  from  this  period,  as  well  as  a  list  of 
about  a  hundred  subjects  for  epic  or  dramatic 
treatment  with  the  theme  of  man's  fall  at  their 
head.  Thus  we  see  that  about  eighteen  years 
before  he  devoted  himself  to  his  masterpiece, 
Milton  had  given  up  the  subject  of  King  Arthur 
and  had  felt  drawn  to  the  larger  topic,  and 
we  know  from  the  splendid  passage  in  "  The 
Reason  of  Church  Government"  (1641)  that 
he  was  engaged  in  study  and  select  reading, 
and  ordering  his  life  chastely  and  nobly,  that 
he  might  the  better  succeed  in  his  great  under- 
taking. There  is  even  evidence  that  he  had 
begun  its  composition,  and  that  the  lines  in 
Book  IV.  (32-41),  in  which  Satan  apostro- 
phizes the  sun,  date  from  about  1642.  But 
Providence  willed  that  the  training  given  by 
study  and  reflection  should  be  supplemented 
by  that  which  can  be  obtained  only  from 
public  affairs,  and  Milton  had  to  become  the 


WORKS  195 

spokesman  of  Liberty  and  England  before  he 
could  be  permitted  to  accomplish,  under  most 
grievous  personal  disabilities  and  disturbing 
domestic  circumstances,  what  is  seemingly  the 
most  marvellous  single  literary  performance 
since  "The  Divine  Comedy." 

The  English  public  realized  more  speedily 
than  is  now  generally  believed,  what  an  im- 
mense boon  Milton  had  bestowed  upon  it. 
Dryden,  then  high  in  popular  favor,  paid  his 
memorable  tribute,  and  when  Addison  in  the 
next  century  wrote  his  famous  critiques,  he 
rather  fanned  than  kindled  the  flame  of  pop- 
ular interest.  People  already  knew  that  Mil- 
ton was  sublime,  that  he  was  the  most  erudite 
of  poets,  that  somehow  out  of  an  unfamiliar 
measure  he  had  evoked  harmonies  hitherto 
unsurpassed.  They  knew  also  that  if  Satan 
was  not  technically  the  hero  of  the  poem,  he 
was  its  most  interesting  personage,  and  they 
doubtless  saw,  as  we  do,  in  his  indomitable 
pride,  a  reflection  of  the  spirit  of  his  nobly 
f  unfortunate  creator.  They  must  have  felt 
also,  as  we  do,  that  the  imaginative  power 
that  kept  Milton  aloft  in  the  very  heaven  of 


196  JOHN   MILTON 

heavens,  that  enabled  him  to  explore  the 
depths  of  hell  and  gave  him  support  even  in 
formless  chaos,  was  something  that  had  been 
absent  from  English  poetry  since  the  days  of 
Shakspere.  The  pure  charm  of  the  scenes  A 
in  Eden  must  likewise  have  seemed  to  them 
the  revelation  of  another  world  of  poetry  than 
that  to  which  they  were  accustomed.  But  are 
not  these  sensations  ours?  Indeed  it  is  likely 
that  not  since  "  Paradise  Lost"  was  published 
has  there  been  any  serious  doubt  about  these 
points  which  are  after  all  the  only  vital  ones 
when  the  poem  is  considered  as  a  work  of 
art.  /  A  sublime  and  unique  style,  a  powerful 
imagination  conducting  marvellous  personages 
through  the  most  important  actions  conceiv- 
able by  man,  a  charm  commensurate  with  the 
grandeur  displayed,  —  in  short,  unsurpassed  no- 
bility of  conception  and  execution,- — these  are 
features  of  "  Paradise  Lost"  that  no  compe- 
tent reader  has  ever  failed  to  recognize.  But 
our  ancestors  had  an  advantage  over  us  in 
that  considerations  not  germane  to  the  poem 
as  a  work  of  art  did  not  affect  them  as  they 
do  us,  because  Milton's  theology  and  cosmog- 


WORKS  197 

ony  were  more  or  less  theirs  as  well.  We 
who  have  been  steadily  veering  away  from 
the  Puritan's  and  even  from  the  reformer's 
view  of  life,  not  only  need  an  apparatus  of 
theological  and  cosmogonical  explanations,  in 
order  to  understand  the  poem,  but  when  we 
do  understand  it,  fail  in  many  cases  to  sym- 
pathize with  it,  fancying  that  we  have  said 
the  last  word  about  it  when  we  have  called  it 

|  a  "  Puritan  Epic."  About  this  point  we  must 
be  somewhat  explicit. 

It  is  quite  clear,  from  an  attentive  reading 
of  the  poem,  or  of  the  criticisms  that  have 
been  passed  upon  it,  that  there  are  weak  spots 
in  its  construction  which  furnish  persons  who 
do  not  like  Milton  the  man,  with  plausible 
grounds  for  attacking  Milton  the  poet.  Mil- 

/  ton's  Protestantism  and  his  republicanism  have 
made  him  obnoxious  to  many  of  his  country- 
men besides  Dr.  Johnson,  and  have,  as  a  rule, 
limited  the  power  and  disposition  of  foreigners 
to  comprehend  him ;  hence  a  certain  amount 
of  harsh  criticism  of  himself  and  his  works  has 
been  more  or  less  constant,  and  his  admirers 
have  been  obliged  to  defend  him,  —  a  proced- 


198  JOHN   MILTON 

ure  which,  while  it  has  not  cost  him  his  posi- 
tion as  a  supreme  classic,  has  certainly  limited 
his  appeal.  But  the  most  unfortunate  feature 
of  the  matter  is  that  most  of  the  objections 
raised  are  not  germane  to  the  discussion  of  a 
work  of  art,  and  yet  seem  to  be  most  impor- 
tant to  the  persons  that  raise  them,  while  such 
as  are  germane  ought  not  to  bear  upon  the 
poet,  since  the  faults  stressed  were  inherent  in 
the  subject-matter  of  the  poem. 

For  example,  it  is  perfectly  true  that  Adam 
ought  to  be  the  hero  of  the  epic;  yet  it  is 
equally  true  that  Satan,  being  the  more  pow- 
erful personage,  and  having  suffered  more, 
had  to  absorb  more  of  the  interest,  not  merely 
of  the  poet,  but  of  the  reader.  It  is  equally 
true  that,  being  the  real  hero,  —  for  all  attempts 
to  prove  that  he  is  not  are  factitious  and  inef- 
fectual, —  he  ought  not  to  pass  out  of  the  ac- 
tion so  early  as  he  does ;  yet  this,  again,  was 
necessitated  by  the  theme,  which  demanded 
that  the  expulsion  of  Adam  and  Eve  should 
end  the  poem,  and  yet  be  preceded  by  an  elab- 
orate setting  forth  of  the  scheme  of  ultimate 
salvation  for  the  human  race.  Thus  Books  XI. 


WORKS  199 

and  XII.  —  it  will  be  remembered  that  origi- 
nally the  poem  consisted  of  ten  books,  and 
that  the  present  arrangement  was  effected  by 
dividing  Books  VII.  and  X.  —  necessarily  let 
the  interest  down  almost  to  the  lowest  level  at 
which  Milton's  genius  could  fly.  Yet  interest 
is  not  a  primary  essential  of  a  work  of  art,  and 
it  may  be  questioned  whether  Milton  does  not 
deserve  as  much  credit  for  extricating  himself 
out  of  a  difficult  situation  as  he  has  received 
blame  for  a  condition  of  things  which  he  did 
not  create. 

Again,  it  is  easy  enough  to  point  out  the 
lack  of  humor  involved  in  making  the  angels 
wear  armor  and  fight  with  cannon;  but  the 
ability  to  discover  the  humorous  quality  in- 
herent in  these  conceptions  is  purely  modern. 
•  Milton  could  not  have  had  it,  any  more  than 
Raphael.  And  if  we  are  determined  to  fault  the 
incongruous  in  poetry,  why  do  we  not  fall  foul 
of  Shakspere  for  making  the  ghost  of  Ham- 
let's father  revisit  the  glimpses  of  the  moon 
clad  in  complete  steel  ?  Nor  could  Milton  have 
foreseen  a  time  when  men  would  doubt  whether 
God  would  ever  have  allowed  Satan  to  ruin 


200  JOHN   MILTON 

the  innocent  first  pair,  when  they  would  ques- 
tion the  propriety  of  representing  Death  as  the 
child  of  Satan  and  Sin,  when  they  would  subject 
the  speeches  of  God  the  Father  to  nice  meta- 
physical examination,  based  on  the  acquired 
knowledge  of  two  additional  centuries,  and 
would  demand  of  the  angels  conduct  similar  to 
that  of  human  beings  under  similar  circum- 
stances. He  could  hardly  have  thought  that 
he  would  ever  be  taken  to  task  for  making 
Adam  wrangle  with  Eve,  when  he  was  only 
following  Scripture,  which  he  could  no  more 
have  doubted  or  deserted  than  he  could  have 
doubted  the  existence  of  a  personal  God  war- 
ring with  a  personal  devil.  He  could,  indeed, 
depart  from  orthodox  Protestantism  so  far  as 
to  become  a  semi-Arian  ;  but  he  could  not  desert 
anthropomorphism,  or  develpp  into  a  pantheist 
on  the  score  of  Copernicanism,  however  much 
he  might  be  in  sympathy  with  the  latter.  He 
was"  the  child  of  his  age,  and,  as  Dr.  Garnett 
well  contends,  is  all  the  greater  because  he  is 
representative.  Finally,  at  least,  Milton  could 
not  have  foreseen  that  an  age  that  had  aban- 
doned, in  large  part,  his  theology  and  cosmog- 


WORKS  2O I 

ony  would  ever  be  unjust  enough  not  to  make 
the  same  allowances  for  him  that  it  makes  will- 
ingly for  Dante  and  Homer.  In  other  words, 
he  could  never  have  fancied  that  a  day  would 
come  when  the  critic  would  cease  to  be  a  judge, 
and  would  become  a  chameleon. 

It  may,  then,  be  concluded  that  a  majority 
of  the  defects  that  critics  have  pointed  out  in 
"  Paradise  Lost "  are  inherent  in  the  subject 
or  in  the  age  and  country  of  which  the  poem 
is  representative.  But  they  are  obviously  far 
(more  than  counterbalanced  by  merits,  partly 
C  belonging  to  the  poet  and  his  art,  partly  to  his 
( subject  and  period.  Milton's  style  is  his  own, 
also  his  rare  learning,  which  has  enabled  him 
to  enrich  his  poem  with  treasures  gathered  from 
every  age  and  clime ;  his  own,  too,  is  his  mighty 
imagination,  which  carries  him  so  easily  to  the 
heights  of  the  sublime,  as  well  as  his  tremen- 
dous power  of  invention,  technically  speaking, 
which  enables  him  to  arrange  and  to  expand 
his  multifarious  materials.  His  theme  and  his 
age  counted,  nevertheless,  for  much.  No  mere 
terrestrial  action  could  have  given  scope  for 
the  almost  superhuman  grandeur  of  his  poem ; 


202  JOHN   MILTON 

no  age  and  country  not  Protestant  could  have 
infused  into  it  so  much  mighty  energy.  The 
mediaeval  and  Catholic  Dante,  as  critics  have 
pointed  out,  was  more  truly  an  inventor  than 
Milton  was ;  but  he  could  not  have  invented  a 
theme  of  such  compelling  power.  In  "  Para- 
dise Lost  "the  theme,  the  age,  and  the  poet 
conspired  as  they  have  rarely  done  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world's  literature  ;  and  if  the  result 
is  not  a  universal  poem  like  the  "  Iliad,"  — 
that  is,  a  poem  covering  so  many  phases  of  our 
finite  life  that  it  seems  to  us  universal,  —  it  is 
at  least  the  sublimest  work  of  the  imagination 
to  be  found  in  any  language. 

But  here,  again,  fortune  has  been  somewhat 
unkind  to  Milton.  Not  only  has  his  Puritan- 
ism alienated  many  modern  readers  from  him, 
especially  extreme  latter-day  Anglicans,  but 
the  highest  quality  of  his  work,  its  sublimity, 
has  militated  against  its  becoming  truly  popu- 
lar. Human  nature,  whatever  its  merits  and 
capacities,  rarely  loves  the  heights  and  cannot 
long  remain  upon  them.  It  is  this  failing  in  his 
readers,  rather  than  the  fact  that  he  is  the  most 
learned  of  poets,  and  thus  often  difficult  to  com- 


WORKS  2O3 

prehend,  though  that  also  counts,  that  chiefly 
limits  the  number  of  Milton's  lovers  to-day.  It 
also  leads  otherwise  competent  critics  to  com- 
mit the  blunder  of  maintaining  that  Milton  is 
greater  as  a  poet  in  youthful  works  like 
"  Comus  "  and  "  Lycidas "  than  in  his  noble 
epic.  This  is  like  maintaining  that  a  man  in  his 
prime  is  inferior,  in  the  totality  of  his  powers, 
to  what  he  was  when  he  was  a  charming  youth. 
They  simply  mean  in  the  last  analysis  that 
charm  and  beauty  fused  with  budding  strength 
^  attract  them  more  than  grandeur  and  sheer  sub- 
\  limity ;  though  they  would  do  well  to  observe 
that  in  the  Eden  portions  of  "  Paradise  Lost " 
r)  charm  and  beauty,  fused  with  a  strength  which 
is  absolutely  sure  of  itself,  are  present  in  full 
measure.  Where,  for  example,  in  "Comus"  or 
"  Lycidas "  shall  we  find  a  passage  fuller  of 
the  true  richness  of  poetry  than  this  from  the 
fourth  book  of  the  epic  (11.  246-256)?  — 

"  Thus  was  this  place, 
A  happy  rural  seat  of  various  view  : 
Groves  whose  rich  trees  wept  odorous  gums  and  balms ; 
Others  whose  fruit,  burnished  with  golden  rind, 
Hung  amiable  —  Hesperian  fables  true, 


204  J°HN   MILTON 

If  true,  here  only  —  and  of  delicious  taste. 
Betwixt  them  lawns,  or  level  downs,  and  flocks 
Grazing  the  tender  herb,  were  interposed, 
Or  palmy  hillock  ;  or  the  flowery  lap 
Of  some  irriguous  valley  spread  her  store, 
Flowers  of  all  hue,  and  without  thorn  the  rose." 

It  would  be,  perhaps,  rash  to  say  that  no  such 
matchlessly  charming  effect  as  the  close  of  the 
last  verse  of  this  passage  can  be  found  in 
"  Comus  "  or  "  Lycidas  "  ;  but,  after  having 
edited  both  poems  with  some  care,  I  cannot 
recall  one. 

Still  it  is  obvious  that  sublimity  is  a  rarer 
quality  of  genius  than  charm  ;  or,  to  express  it 
concretely,  that  "  Lycidas  "  has  more  rivals  in 
literature  than  "  Paradise  Lost"  has.  But  judg- 
ment tells  us  that  that  which  is  rare  and  at  the 
same  time  positively  powerful  deserves  the  high- 
est admiration  we  can  give,  and  on  this  verdict 
of  judgment  depend  not  only  the  hierarchies 
of  art,  but  also  the  central  truths  of  religion. 

If  now  it  be  asked  how  a  reader  can  over- 
come his  limitations  and  learn  to  appreciate 
"  Paradise  Lost "  with  something  like  justice, 
a  fairly  satisfactory  answer  can  at  once  be 


WORKS  205 

given.  He  must  learn,  in  the  first  place,  that  a 
work  of  art  should  not  be  made  the  object  of 
his  religious  or  scientific  or  other  preconcep- 
tions or  prejudices;  this  is  only  to  say  that  he 
should  observe  toward  a  poet  the  courtesy  that 
the  rules  of  good  society  teach  him  to  observe 
in  intercourse  with  his  neighbors.  He  must  not 
stand  ready  to  do  battle  for  his  opinions  on 
religion,  politics,  and  the  like  until  they  are 
vitally  assailed,  which  hardly  ever  happens  in 
connection  with  a  true  work  of  art.  Even  in 
"  Paradise  Lost "  the  passages  in  which  Milton 
can  be  justly  charged  with  seeking  positively  to 
inculcate  Puritan  principles  and  opinions  and  to 
attack  the  tenets  of  others  are  few  and  far  be- 
tween; yet,  if  one  were  to  judge  from  the  way 
the  critics  talk,  one  would  think  that  the  great 
poet  was  forever  coming  down  from  the  Aonian 
Mount  in  order  to  ascend  the  pulpit. 

In  the  second  place,  the  reader  must,  as  far 
as  possible,  make  his  own  imagination  assist 
that  of  the  poet,  or  at  least,  as  Mark  Pattison 
says,  he  must  check  all  resistance  to  the  ar- 
tist's efforts.  The  resistance  that  the  lower 
stages  of  culture  always  oppose  to  the  higher 


2O6  JOHN   MILTON 

must  be  minimized  by  a  recourse  to  the  aids 
given  in  abundance  by  commentators  and  edi- 
tors, especially  to  such  metrical  aids  as  will  en- 
able us  to  comprehend  the  wonderful  technique 
of  the  blank  verse,  without  a  knowledge  of  which 
half  the  glory  of  "  Paradise  Lost "  will  be  for- 
ever obscured  to  us. 

Finally,  the  tendency  to  shirk  contact  with  the 
sublime  must  be  subdued  in  the  only  possible 
way,  by  the  resolute  endeavor  to  live  with  the 
eye  fixed  on  the  heights.  The  best  way  to  learn 
to  appreciate  "Paradise  Lost"  is  to  read  it  and 
re-read  it.  Like  all  great  works  of  art,  it  yields 
its  choicest  pleasures  only  to  its  patient  students 
and  lovers.  One  might  as  well  expect  to  ex- 
haust the  Mona  Lisa's  charm  and  meaning  at 
a  glance  as  to  appreciate  Milton's  great  epic 
at  one  reading.  It  is  only  through  reading  and 
re-reading  that  the  full  harmony  of  the  periods 
will  be  borne  upon  the  ear;  that  the  majestic 
involution  of  the  diction  will  become  a  help 
rather  than  a  hindrance  to  the  imagination ; 
that  the  spirit  will  breathe  freely  in  the  courts 
of  heaven  or  amid  the  conclaves  of  hell ;  that  the 
pride  and  subtlety  of  the  Fiend,  the  majestic 


WORKS  2O7 

innocence  of  our  first  parents,  the  single-hearted 
loyalty  of  the  angels,  and  the  ineffable  purity  of 
the  Son  of  God  will  become  clearly  revealed  to 
us ;  that,  finally,  the  tremendous  import  of  the 
drama  and  the  marvellous  and  entire  adequacy 
of  the  poet  to  its  handling  will  hold  us  spell- 
bound yet  not  dazed,  and  make  the  mighty 
poem  our  possession  for  always,  our  Kri)fjia  €69 
aei. 

But,  some  one  may  say,  though  we  may  be 
willing  to  grant  that  foreigners  have  been, 
with  few  exceptions,  unjust  to  Milton  from 
the  days  of  Voltaire's  "  Candide "  to  those  of 
M.  Scherer's  essay,  seemingly  overpraised  by 
Matthew  Arnold,  and  though  we  may  grant 
that  Milton  is  a  great  poetic  artist  and  that 
he  made  the  most  of  his  theme,  we  are  not 
prepared  to  accept  Schopenhauer's  conten- 
tion that  interest  is  not  a  prime  necessity  of  a 
work  of  art  and  we  find  "  Paradise  Lost "  dull. 
What  reply  is  one  to  make  to  this  frank  con- 
fession and  avoidance  ?  The  only  reply  I  can 
make  is  that  I  do  not  see  how  a  powerful 
presentation  of  the  story  of  man's  fall  and 
its  attendant  events  can  fail  to  be  interesting 


208  JOHN   MILTON 

to  a  Christian  believer  or  even  to  any  one  who 
has  concerned  himself  with  man's  origin  and 
the  chief  explanations  that  have  been  given 
of  it,  except  on  the  supposition,  which  I  fear 
to  be  a  true  one,  that  men  and  women  of 
certain  classes  are  developing  a  growing  habit 
of  putting  everything  that  pertains  to  the 
theory  or  the  contemplation  of  religion  to  one 
side,  whether  it  is  to  be  taken  up  on  one  day 
out  of  seven  or  not  at  all.  That  such  a  habit 
exists  among  cultivated  Anglo-Saxons,  espe- 
cially in  this  country,  will  not  be  denied,  I 
think,  by  any  competent  observer.  In  spite 
of  recent  efforts  to  improve  and  increase  the 
study  of  the  Bible,  that  book  is  being  less  and 
less  read  by  sophisticated  people,  who  are,  in 
my  judgment,  precisely  the  readers  that  find 
Milton  dull.  But  if  theology  and  the  Bible, 
and  talk  or  thought  on  religious  subjects,  are 
put  aside  for  one  day  in  the  week  or  for  good 
and  all,  it  is  no  wonder  that  readers  should 
find  the  theme  of  "  Paradise  Lost  "  dull.  And 
if  scientific  views  of  the  universe  have  on 
many  minds  the  effect  of  alienating  them 
from  poetry,  as  they  confessedly  had  on  Dar- 


WORKS  209 

win's,  the  case  of  Milton,  who  holds  both  by 
theology  and  by  poetry,  appears  to  be  well- 
nigh  hopeless.  If  he  seems  dull  because  we 
have  relegated  his  subject-matter  to  the  care 
of  professional  preachers,  just  as  we  have 
relegated  the  common  and  statute  law  to  pro- 
fessional lawyers,  or  if  he  seems  dull  because 
his  theory  of  the  universe  is  childish  in  our 
eyes,  then  there  is  no  way  of  rehabilitating 
him  except  first  rehabilitating  his  readers. 

And  yet  on  no  other  suppositions  than 
those  just  made  can  one  readily  or  fairly  ac- 
count for  Milton's  seeming  dull.  Certainly  for 
any  one  who  accepts  Christian  teaching  with 
regard  to  the  fall  and  redemption  of  man,  the 
superbly  poetical  and  powerful  presentation 
of  the  council  of  the  fiends,  of  the  war  in 
heaven,  of  the  bliss  of  our  first  parents  and 
of  their  temptation,  must  possess  a  perma- 
nent interest  unless  our  acceptance  of  these 
great  themes  be  a  purely  conventional  one. 
This  means  that  at  least  three-fourths  of  the 
poem  ought  to  possess  permanent  interest, 
which  is  a  proportion  that  we  shall  find  few 
epics  exhibiting,  even  though  we  throw  to 


210  JOHN   MILTON 

the  winds  Poe's  theories  with  regard  to  the 
proper  length  of  poems.  On  the  other  hand, 
just  as  large  a  portion  of  the  poem  ought 
to  prove  interesting  to  the  reader  who  ap- 
proaches it  as  he  does  the  "  Iliad  "  with  a  dis- 
engaged mind.  Thus,  when  all  is  said,  the 
admirer  of  "  Paradise  Lost "  is  not  obliged 
in  its  support  to  fall  back  upon  the  conten- 
tion that  interest  is  not  a  matter  of  primary 
concern  in  a  work  of  art.  It  will  indeed  be 
well  for  any  reader  to  develop  his  taste  so 
that  the  rhythmical,  descriptive,  and  struc- 
tural beauties  of  a  poem  will  be  his  first  con- 
cern ;  but  there  is  no  reason  why  he  should 
not  enjoy  "  Paradise  Lost  "  long  before  he  has 
attained  this  consummation.  If,  however,  he 
indulges  his  analytical  faculties  as  M.  Scherer 
and  so  many  other  critics  have  done,  he  will 
be  certain  to  put  it  out  of  his  power  to  enjoy 
Milton  to  the  full.  Indeed,  I  am  simple- 
minded  enough  to  fail  to  perceive  why  such 
analysis  does  not  kill  nearly  all  poetry ;  for 
it  is  an  analysis  that  starts  out  with  the  as- 
sumption that  a  thing  should  be  what  it  obvi- 
ously could  not  have  been.  A  certain  amount 


WORKS  211 

of  seventeenth-century  Protestant  theology  wa^ 
absolutely  necessary  to  Milton's  epic;  but 
with  the  theology  went  along  a  theme  of  tran- 
scendent human  interest  and  compelling  power 
for  all  who  accepted  the  theology  then,  or  for 
all  who  are  willing  to  realize  it  imaginatively 
now.  Yet  our  critics,  French  and  English, 
fall  foul  of  this  necessary  element  and  rend 
it  and  then  prance  off  proudly  as  a  dog  does 
with  his  bone.  And  they  actually  expect  us 
to  applaud  them.  But  enough  of  this. 

We  must  now  pass  to  a  brief  consideration  of 
what  Milton  borrowed  from  other  poets  in  order 
to  adorn  "  Paradise  Lost."  As  might  have  been 
expected,  he  has  been  often  charged  with  plagi- 
arism, although  no  one  since  Lauder  has  been 
bold  enough  to  forge  his  proofs  to  sustain  the 
charge.  With  regard  to  the  Bible  and  the 
classics  little  need  be  said.  They  are  the  open 
property  of  modern  poets,  and  Milton  drew  from 
them  whenever  he  wished.  It  is  very  difficult 
to  tell  how  much  he  borrowed  from  his  more 
immediate  predecessors.  According  to  Masson's 
count  the  number  of  the  books  that  are  sus- 
pected of  having  given  him  hints  is  so  large  as 


212  JOHN   MILTON 

to  be  positively  ridiculous.1  The  fall  of  man  was 
naturally  a  sufficiently  attractive  subject  to  have 
been  treated  time  and  again  in  literature  before  he 
wrote.  He  had  heard  enough  and  read  enough 
about  it  before  he  finally  chose  it  as  a  theme,  to 
have  managed  it  much  as  he  did  without  the  aid 
of  a  single  author  during  the  period  of  actual 
composition ;  but  it  is  not  unlikely  that,  student 
as  he  was,  he  deliberately,  at  one  time  or  another, 
turned  over  many  old  books  or  had  them  read 
to  him  in  order  that  he  might  learn  how  other 
writers  had  treated  the  subject.  From  this 
reading  he  may  consciously  or  unconsciously 
have  received  hints  for  his  own  work ;  but  this 
is  largely  a  matter  of  conjecture.  It  is  likely 
enough,  since  "  Paradise  Lost "  was  first  con- 
ceived as  a  drama,  that  the  Scriptural  play  of 
the  Italian,  Giovanni  Battista  Andreini  (1578- 
1652),  entitled  "Adamo"(i6i3),  may,  as  Voltaire 
first  suggested,  have  turned  Milton's  thoughts  to 

1  Many  of  the  works  here  referred  to  have  been  inaccessible 
to  me,  so  that  I  have  been  forced  to  rely  on  Masson's  treatment 
of  the  topic  of  Milton's  indebtedness  and  on  my  own  experience 
in  investigating  similar  topics.  I  am  inclined  to  be  sceptical 
in  nine  out  of  ten  cases  of  supposed  plagiarism.  I  have  in- 
vestigated the  Vondel  charges. 


WORKS  213 

the  subject,  although  there  seems  to  be  not  a 
great  deal  of  proof  that  it  did.  Or  he  may  have 
known  the  "  Adamus  Exul  "  of  Grotius  or  some 
Latin  verses  by  Barlaeus,  or  any  number  of 
other  now-forgotten  performances.  It  is  not  at 
all  likely  that  he  knew  anything  definite  of  his 
English  predecessor,  the  pseudo-Caedmon,  first 
printed  in  1655,  when  Milton  was  thinking  chiefly 
about  that  far  less  savory  character,  Alexander 
Morus.  It  is  not  improbable,  according  to  Dr. 
Garnett,  a  safe  authority,  that  he  got  a  hint  for 
the  idea  of  his  diabolical  conclave  from  the 
Italian  reformer  Bernardino  Ochino.  Yet  after 
all  an  infernal  council  was  a  most  natural  start- 
ing-point for  the  poem,  and  Milton,  Ochino,  and 
Vondel  might  all  have  made  Beelzebub  second 
in  command  to  Satan  without  the  slightest  in- 
debtedness to  one  another. 

The  mention  of  the  Dutch  poet,  Joost  van  den 
Vondel,  reminds  us,  however,  that  he  is  the 
author  to  whom  modern  critics  seem  mostly 
determined  to  make  Milton  indebted.  More 
than  one  book  and  essay  have  been  written  to 
prove  the  obligations  of  "  Paradise  Lost "  to  the 
drama  "  Lucifer,"  published  in  1654,  and  prc 


214  JOHN  MILTON 

ably  more  will  be  unless  critics  learn  —  an  im- 
probable supposition  —  that  while  tracing  the 
literary  obligations  of  a  great  poet  is  a  harm- 
less and  interesting  pursuit,  it  not  infrequently 
tends  to  become  fatuous.  It  is  not  yet  proved, 
although  it  is,  perhaps,  probable,  that  Milton 
had  Vondel's  "  Lucifer "  read  to  him ;  it  is 
still  less  clear  that  the  verbal  correspondences 
between  the  epic  and  the  drama  —  most  of 
which  exist  only  in  the  shaping  imaginations  of 
the  critics  —  are  either  conscious  or  unconscious 
obligations  on  the  part  of  the  later  writer. 
Even  the  idea  expressed  in  the  famous  line, 

"  Better  to  reign  in  hell  than  serve  in  heaven," 

may  have  been  in  Milton's  mind  long  before  he 
ever  heard  Vondel's  couplet  expressing  the 
same  notion.  So,  too,  with  the  splendid  lines  in 
Book  IV.  (9/7-980)  describing  the  movement  of 
the  angelic  squadron  which  have  been  paralleled 
in  "  Lucifer."  But  granting  that  Milton  con- 
sciously borrowed  from  Vondel  and  other  poets, 
it  would  require  the  height  of  stupidity  to  deny 
that  he  bettered  what  he  borrowed  ;  and  he  him- 
self has  rightly  contended  that  such  appropria- 


WORKS  215 

tion  is  entirely  admissible.  The  main  point, 
however,  to  be  remembered  in  this  connection  is 
that  the  chances  are  always  against  a  poet's 
checking  the  flow  of  his  creative  impulse  in 
order  consciously  and  deliberately  to  fit  into  his 
verses  an  idea  or  image  borrowed  from  any 
source  whatever.  If  the  idea  or  image  has  been 
assimilated  by  him,  it  may  be  unconsciously 
reproduced ;  but  surely  a  want  of  psychological 
knowledge  characterizes  those  critics  who  argue 
from  every  striking  correspondence  of  thought 
or  expression  the  obligation  of  one  writer  to 
another.  In  the  sense  that  he  reproduced  what 
he  had  assimilated,  Milton  may  perhaps  be  said 
to  owe  more  to  his  fellows  than  most  great 
poets ;  but  in  the  sense  that  he  made  his  verses 
a  mosaic  of  other  men's  thoughts  and  expres- 
sions, he  is  as  innocent  of  indebtedness  as  his 
accusers  are  of  humor  and  common  sense. 

But  we  have  been  defending  Milton  long 
enough,  and  it  is  time  to  say  something  more 
positive  about  his  masterpiece.  Yet,  after  all, 
what  can  be  said  that  is  either  new  or  ade- 
quate ?  An  analysis  of  so  well-known  a  poem 
would  be  out  of  place,  an  introduction  to  it  in 


2l6  JOHN  MILTON 

the  shape  of  a  discussion  of  its  cosmogony  or 
its  theology  would  be  equally  inappropriate 
and  useless  as  well,  since  Professor  Masson  has 
already  accomplished  the  task  in  a  most  thor- 
ough manner.  Any  adequate  treatment  of  the 
blank  verse,  which  remains  the  allurement  and 
despair  of  all  poets  using  the  English  language, 
would  be  impossible  within  the  limits  of  this 
chapter;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  almost 
every  single  topic,  such  as  the  elaborate  similes,^ 
)  the  felicitous  employment  of  proper  names,  the 
involution  of  the  syntax,  and  the  like.  A  dis- 
cussion of  the  characters  would  be  equally 
fruitless  and  unnecessary,  besides  holding  by 
methods  of  criticism  now  abandoned  to  literary 
clubs,  and  we  may  therefore  content  ourselves 
with  saying  a  few  words  about  the  rank  held 
by  the  poem  among  the  world's  great  epics. 
This  is,  indeed,  a  subject  too  large  for  full 
treatment  here,  and  one  on  which  critics 
are  sure  to  disagree ;  but  it  will,  at  least,  open 
up  interesting  fields  for  speculation.  Before 
we  enter  upon  it,  however,  it  will  be  well  to  em- 
phasize the  fact  that  it  is  to  "Paradise  Lost" 
that  the  student  of  the  art  of  poetry  must  come 


WORKS  2 I 7 

for  his  most  important  and  inspiring  lessons. 
If  it  is  not  the  most  purely  artistic,  elaborate 
work  in  the  world's  literature,  it  probably  holds 
this  position  in  English  literature.  All  the 
resources  of  the  poet's  art  are  displayed  in  it 
in  full  perfection,  so  far  as  the  epic  form  would 
allow.  The  poet's  imagination  may  flag  at 
times,  owing  to  the  exigencies  of  his  subject, 
but  his  artistic  power  never.  Hence  it  is  a  mis- 
take to  read  the  poem  in  selections,  or  to  break 
off  after  finishing  the  first  four  books.  Every 
page  contains  some  marvel  of  rhythm  or  dic- 
tion ;  nor  are  nine-tenths  of  these  known  to  the 
reading  public,  which  is  in  the  habit  of  fancying 
that,  with  its  short-cuts  to  culture,  it  gets  at 
the  heart  of  a  classic  author.  How  many  peo- 
ple, for  example,  have  fully  realized  the  power 
.of  these  lines  from  Book  VII.,  in  which  Adam 
seeks  to  detain  Raphael,  or  have  gauged  the 
timbre  of  the  epithet  "  unapparent  "  ? 

"  And  the  great  Light  of  Day  yet  wants  to  run 
Much  of  his  race,  though  steep.     Suspense  in  heaven 
Held  by  thy  voice,  thy  potent  voice  he  hears, 
And  longer  will  delay  to  hear  thee  tell 
His  generation  and  the  rising  birth 


2l8  JOHN   MILTON 

Of  Nature  from  the  unapparent  Deep : 

Or,  if  the  Star  of  Evening  and  the  Moon 

Haste  to  thy  audience,  Night  with  her  will  bring 

Silence,  and  Sleep  listening  to  thee  will  watch  ; 

Or  we  can  bid  his  absence  till  thy  song 

End,  and  dismiss  thee  ere  the  morning  shine." 

This  may  or  may  not  be  in  the  "  grand  style," 
but  who  can  wonder  that  it  induced  the  arch- 
angel to  prolong  his  stay  ? 

Turning  now  to  the  relations  sustained  by 
Milton's  epic  to  the  other  great  world-poems, 
it  is  a  commonplace  to  remark  that  it  belongs 
to  the  class  of  artificial  rather  than  national  or 
natural  epics.  Yet  it  would  be  unjust  not  to 
maintain  that,  in  so  far  as  it  embodies  the  spec- 
ulations and  imaginings  of  Christendom  on  the 
perennially  interesting  and  universal  problems 
of  man's  creation  and  des.tiny,  it  partakes, 
through  its  theme,  of  some  of  the  noblest  and 
most  inevitable  features  of  those  natural  epics 
that,  like  the  "  Iliad,"  seem  to  have  been  born 
to  express  the  greatness  of  a  race.  In  other 
words,  not  only  does  the  tremendous  import  of 
its  theme  add  greatly  to  the  sublimity  of  "  Para- 
dise Lost,"  it  actually  gives  it  a  representative 


WORKS  219 

standing  that  is  perhaps  nearer  to  the  "  Iliad  " 
than  that  of  the  "^Eneid"  or  "  The  Divine 
Comedy."  That  such  a  claim  should  be  made 
for  it  with  regard  to  Dante's  great  poem  will 
probably  excite  surprise  in  this  day  of  the 
Italian's  elevation  over  his  English  peer ;  but 
the  fact  remains  that,  although  the  spirit  of 
Dante's  "  Comedy "  represents  the  spirit  of 
mediaeval  Catholicism,  its  form  and  substance 
are  mainly  Dante's,  and,  while  reflecting  the 
greatest  glory  upon  him  as  an  inventor,  lack 
much  of  the  inevitableness  that  attaches  to  por- 
tions, a|  least,  of  "  Paradise  Lost,"  to  a  greater 
degree  than  to  any  other  great  epic  since  the 
"  Iliad." 

As  a  work  of  conscious  art,  however,  "  Par- 
adise Lost "  must  after  all  take  its  stand  with 
the  epics  of  Virgil,  Dante,  Tasso,  and  their 
fellows ;  it  is  par  excellence  a  literary  epic 
and  cannot  possess  the  charm  of  unconscious 
perfection  to  be  found  in  Homer,  or  that  of 
nai've  simplicity  and  directness  to  be  found  in 
"  Beowulf  "  and  the  "  Nibelungenlied."  But 
it  must  be  observed  that  it  does  not  follow 
that,  because  a  poem  is  the  result  of  conscious 


220  JOHN   MILTON 

art,  it  is  therefore  inferior  to  a  poem  that 
springs  almost  naturally  into  existence,  like 
a  ballad  or  an  epic  founded  on  lays.  Many 
readers  and  critics  in  this  century  surfer  from 
what  may  be  called  "the  heresy  of  the 
natural."  Man  has  often  supplemented  and 
bettered  nature  in  the  past  and  he  will  con- 
tinue to  do  so ;  on  the  other  hand,  there  are 
occasions  when  he  cannot  touch  nature  with- 
out spoiling  her.  He  can  take  an  uninviting 
spot  and  turn  it  into  a  bower  of  beauty ; 
but  he  lowers  the  sublimity  of  the  Alps  by 
rendering  them  habitable.  It  will  not  do, 
therefore,  to  make  a  shibboleth  of  the  word 
"natural."  In  literature  the  so-called  "nat- 
ural "  products  have  their  own  charm  and 
power,  which  may  or  may  not  surpass  those 
of  consciously  artistic  products.  For  exam- 
ple, the  "  Beowulf,"  which  is  distinctly  primi- 
tive and  natural,  would  be  considered  equal 
in  charm  and  power  to  "  Paradise  Lost "  only 
by  some  philological  pedant  or  some  hope- 
less theorist.  On  the  other  hand,  "  Para- 
)dise  Lost,"  with  all  its  grandeur  of  theme 
!  and  execution,  could  be  considered  equal  to 


WORKS  221 

the  "Iliad,"  with  its  natural  grandeur  of  un- 
conscious dignity,  its  divine  charm,  its  utter 
inevitableness,  only  by  a  reader  doomed  to 
make  Homer's  acquaintance  through  a  trans- 
lation, or  by  one  disposed  to  make  the  sub- 
lime outrank  all  other  qualities  of  poetry. 
But  "  Beowulf"  is  as  natural  as  the  "Iliad," 
perhaps  more  so ;  yet  while  a  touch  of  extra 
art  would  spoil  the  latter  poem,  the  former 
might  stand  many  such  touches  without  loss. 
In  the  matter  of  syntax  alone  the  "  natural  " 
Anglo-Saxon  epic  suffers  greatly,  not  only  in 
comparison  with  the  modern  English  epic, — 
for  Milton's  involved  syntax,  though  it  has  re- 
pelled many  a  reader,  is  one  of  the  special 
glories  of  his  poetic  art,  -—  but  when  set  beside 
the  Greek.  There  had  either  been  poets  be- 
fore Homer,  just  as  there  had  been  great  men 
before  Agamemnon,  or  Greek  syntax  sprang 
ready  armed  from  the  former's  brain ;  Eng- 
lish syntax  emerged  more  like  Vulcan  than 
like  Minerva  from  the  brain  of  the  author  of 
the  "Beowulf."  Hence  consistent  "natural- 
ists" ought  to  prefer  "Beowulf"  to  the  "Iliad," 
which  they  probably  do. 


222  JOHN   MILTON 

Granting  now  that  "  Paradise  Lost "  must 
perhaps  rank  below  either  of  the  Homeric 
epics,  but  maintaining  that  it  surpasses  even 
them  in  sublimity  of  imagination  and  all  other 
of  the  natural  epics  in  most  essentials,  let  us 
endeavor  to  weigh  it  with  its  kindred  poems 
of  conscious  art.  It  is  obviously  difficult  to 
weigh  it  with  works  not  kindred,  such  as 
Shakspere's  dramas  or  lyrics.  A  great  epic 
is  certainly  a  rarer  production  than  a  great 
drama  or  lyric ;  it  is  rarer  than  a  great  collec- 
tion of  lyrics ;  but  it  is  not  rarer  than  a 
great  body  of  supreme  dramatic  work  like 
the  Shaksperian.  The  plays  of  Shakspere 
taken  collectively  must  probably  rank,  on 
account  of  the  universal  genius  displayed  in 
them,  above  Milton's  masterpiece,  though 
yielding  to  that  in  sublimity  and  perhaps  in 
artistic  perfection,  technically  speaking.  In 
other  words,  Shakspere's  genius  is  superior 
to  that  of  Milton  in  range,  though  seemingly 
not  in  quality.  But  this  is  only  to  say  that 
Shakspere  alone  of  moderns  is  worthy  to  stand 
beside  —  no  one  in  my  judgment  can  stand 
above  —  the  immortal  singer  of  heroic  Greece. 


WORKS  223 

With  regard  to  other  dramatists  and  lyrists 
a  decision  is  not  so  difficult.  The  collected 
works  of  none  of  them  show  universality,  and 
Milton's  genius  in  its  power  and  range  falls  only 
just  short  of  being  universal.  There  is,  there- 
fore, no  room  to  place  any  dramatist  or  lyrist 
between  him  and  his  two  great  superiors. 

But  has  he  not  a  superior  in  his  own  class  of 
poets?  If  he  has,  it  must  be  Dante.  Tasso 
and  Spenser  may  almost  match  him  in  charm, 
but  obviously  lack  his  power.  Goethe  is  prob- 
ably superior  to  him  in  breadth  and  serenity  of 
intelligence,  but  falls  short  in  sublimity,  charm,\ 
and  artistic  power.  "  Faust "  may  appeal  to  us 
moderns  on  the  intellectual  side  more  than 
"  Paradise  Lost  "  does  ;  but  intellectual  interest 
is  a  lower  thing  than  artistic  rapture.  Victor 
Hugo  on  the  other  hand,  however  grandiose  his 
conceptions  and  however  marvellous  his  com- 
mand of  his  metrical  instrument,  —  a  command 
_in  its  way  worthy  of  being  compared  with  that 
of  Homer  or  of  Milton,  —  has  not^^the  sanity 
and  intellectual  strength  and  poise  necessary  for 
the  poet  who  would  successfully  rival  Dante 
or  Milton.  Of  our  great  Chaucer  and  those 


224  J°HN   MILTON 

often  admirable  narrative  poets  beneath  him  in 
the  scale,  of  whom  most  literatures  can  boast  a 
few,  it  is  almost  needless  to  speak  in  this  con- 
nection. But  a  word  must  be  said  about 
Virgil.  In  greatness  of  theme,  in  conscious 
artistic  mastery,  in  the  perfection  of  metrical 
workmanship,  in  general  intellectual  balance 
and  power,  the  great  Roman  is  almost,  if  not 
quite,  the  equal  of  the  great  Englishman.  In 
point  of  charm  he  seems  to  be  superior ;  in 
point  of  sublimity  and  sheer  energy  he  is  clearly 
inferior.  The  balance  will  therefore  tip  in 
accordance  with  the  relative  importance  allowed 
to  charm  and  power  in  the  mind  of  the  critic. 
And  when  all  is  said,  this  is  the  safest  con- 
clusion to  be  reached  when  Milton  is  balanced 
against  his  great  predecessor,  Dante.  The  two 
poets  have,  of  course,  been  compared  ever  since 
the  masterpiece  of  the  later  became  well  known  ; 
but  it  cannot  fairly  be  said  that  their  respective 
merits  have  yet  been  thoroughly  settled.  It  is 
quite  true  that  if  a  show  of  critical  hands  were 
made  Dante  would  bear  off  the  palm.  He  also 
stands  better  than  Milton  the  test  of  cosmo- 
politan success.  But  Milton's  Protestantism  has 


WORKS  22$ 

been  in  his  way  in  Roman  Catholic  countries 
more  than  Dante's  Catholicism  has  been  in  his 
way  in  Protestant  countries,  so  that  the  cosmo- 
politan test  is  not  quite  fair.  There  have  been 
in  this  century  several  reactions,  religious, 
literary,  and  artistic,  toward  medievalism  that 
count  in  Dante's  favor  now,  but  may  not  weigh 
greatly  with  the  twentieth  century.  Besides, 
Milton  has  never  lacked  lovers  like  Landor,  who 
doubted  "  whether  the  Creator  ever  created  one 
altogether  so  great  as  Milton,"  or  critics  like  Dr. 
Garnett,  who,  in  his  "  History  of  Italian  Litera- 
ture," speaking  of  Dante  as  the  more  represent- 
ative man,  is  nevertheless  inclined  to  rate  Mil- 
ton the  more  highly  as  a  poet.  He  has  not  even 
lacked  sympathetic  women  admirers,  like  Sara 
Coleridge,  who  actually  seems  to  have  argued 
with  Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere  by  letter  as  to  the  Ital- 
ian's inferiority  to  the  Englishman.  It  is  need- 
less to  say  that  the  Irish  poet  was  not  convinced, 
finding  in  Dante  a  charm,  a  humane  quality,  a 
philosophy,  that  he  could  not  discover  in  Milton. 
With  regard  to  Dante's  superiority  from  the 
point  of  view  of  charm,  as  well  as  from  that  of 
human  interest,  no  counter  plea  shall  be  entered 
Q 


226  JOHN   MILTON 

here.  There  is  no  passage  in  "Paradise  Lost" 
so  human,  so  touching,  as  the  incident  of  Fran- 
cesca  da  Rimini.  There  is  probably  no  passage 
so  exquisitely  beautiful  as  that  about  the  Siren 
in  the  "  Purgatorio."  In  originality  of  concep- 
tion, in  the  power  to  paint  minutely  vivid 
pictures,  in  his  appreciation  of  the  grandeur  and 
sweetness  of  love,  Dante  surpasses  Milton,  and 
the  latter's  admirers  may  as  well^admit  the  fact 
gracefully.  They  may  also  admit  Dr.  Garnett's 
claim  that  Dante  is  the  more  representative  man, 
which  does  not  necessarily  mean  the  greater 
man;  and  they  can  if  they  are  minded  admit 
Mr.  de  Vere's  contention  that  his  work  is  more 
philosophical,  although  wherein  either  poet  is 
nowadays  entitled  to  be  considered  specially 
philosophical  might  puzzle  any  one  not  a  Roman 
Catholic  or  a  Puritan  to  tell.  But  when  Dante's 
admirers  —  and  who  is  not  his  admirer  ?  —  have 
had  their  say,  they  must,  it  would  seem,  while 
rightfully  asserting  his  strenuous  dignity,  admit 
that  in  sublimity,  in  the  power  to  body  forth 
tremendous  conceptions,  —  in  a  word,  to  sound 
infinity,  —  he  is  Milton's  inferior,  and  that  thus 
very  much  the  same  balance  has  to  be  struck  as 


WORKS  227 

in  the  case  of  Virgil.  Do  charm,  vividness,/ 
dignity,  philosophy,  and  the  human  touch  out-/ 
weigh  the  grandeur  of  matchless  sublimity,  of( 
superhuman  power,  of  resistless  but  self-con-) 
trolled  energy?  If  we  answer  "yes,"  then  we 
must  put  Dante  next  to  Homer  and  Shakspere ; 
if  we  answer  "no,"  then  we  must  put  Milton 
there.  It  is  not  a  question  which  of  the  two 
poets  we  most  love,  which  is  our  most  constant 
companion;  it  is  a  question  of  our  judgment 
as  to  which  is  greater ;  and  if  any  man  wishes 
to  refrain  from  attempting  such  a  rash  judgment, 
who  shall  blame  him  ? 

Some  of  us  are  so  constituted,  however,  that 
we  are  obliged  to  love  and  admire  Milton  more 
than  we  do  Dante,  if,  indeed,  we  do  not  go  the 
whole  length  with  Landor  and  proclaim  him  to 
be  the  greatest  of  mortal  men.  And  we  have 
something  more  than  the  qualities  of  sublimity 
and  energy  on  which  to  rest  our  belief  in  his 
supereminent  greatness.  Dante,  be  it  spoken 
reverently,  has  faults  which  his  admirers  mini- 
mize, and  Milton  has  merits  of  which  his  ad- 
mirers have  hardly  made  enough. 

There  can  be  little  question  that,  with  all  the 


228  JOHN  MILTON 

advantages  his  human  touch  gives  him,  Dante 
is  too  personal ;  that  his  very  vividness  of  de- 
scription carries  him  too  far.  He  is,  at  times, 
too  local  in  his  loves  and  hates  to  reach  the 
proper  plane  of  the  world-poet.  His  very  con- 
creteness,  often  so  great  a  help  to  him,  becomes 
a  hindrance  on  occasions,  as  when,  for  exam- 
ple, at  the  end  of  the  "  Inferno,"  he  has  to 
describe  Satan.  Here  he  becomes  grotesque, 
just  where  Milton  is  most  sublime.  Then, 
again,  Dante's  "action,"  technically  speaking, 
is  just  as  liable  to  the  charge  of  inconsistency 
as  Milton's.  His  idealization  of  Beatrice  is 
quite  as  much  to  be  faulted,  of  course  from 
points  of  view  not  artistic,  as  Milton's  ideali- 
zation of  Satan,  —  a  statement  which  merely 
means,  in  the  last  analysis,  that  critics  like 
Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere  have  no  right  to  grow 
melancholy  over  Milton's  glorification  of  the 
principle  of  evil.  Furthermore,  Dante's  age 
limited  him,  and  caused  him  to  err,  every  whit 
as  much  as  Milton's  age  limited  and  injured 
him.  There  is  a  bitterrTess  of  partisanship  in 
"  The  Divine  Comedy  "  not  to  be  paralleled  in 
"Paradise  Lost,"  even  though  we  remember 


WORKS  229 

that  Milton  inserted  those  unnecessary  lines 
about  Limbo;  there  are  dreary  wastes  of 
mediaeval  theology  and  philosophy  in  the  "  Pur- 
gatorio "  and  "  Paradiso,"  beside  which  the 
speeches  of  Milton's  Puritan  God  are  luminous 
with  interest.  But  Milton's  faults  are  empha- 
sized, while  Dante's  are  passed  over  by  an  age 
reactionary  enough  to  prefer  Botticelli's  mediae- 
val types  of  ascetic  beauty  to  Raphael's  glori- 
ous Renaissance  types  of  rounded  loveliness. 
With  regard,  now,  to  Milton's  more  positive 
merits,  Dr.  Garnett  is  seemingly  right  in  frankly 
intimating  that  as  poet,  that  is,  as  poetic 
artist,  Milton  is  Dante's  superior.  Dante's 
diction  and  rhythm,  his  figures,  his  command 
of  the  resources  of  his  art,  are  almost  beyond 
praise ;  but  some  of  us  think  that  Milton  has 
slightly  surpassed  him  in  every  one  of  these 
particulars.  The  Miltonic  harmonies,  diction, 
and  figures,  and,  one  may  add,  general  sense 
of  proportion,  are  unmatched  in  Dante,  or  in 
Shakspere,  for  that  matter,  for  the  true  Mil- 
tonian,  and  these  are  most  important  points 
when  a  balance  is  being  struck  between  rival 
poets.  But  here,  again,  fortune  has  been  un- 


230  JOHN   MILTON 

kind  to  Milton.  His  chief  qualities,  sublimity 
and  energy,  dazzle  rather  than  attract  men ; 
and  the  splendors  of  his  art  produce  the  same 
effect.  Dante  is  more  human,  more  lovable, 
more  endowed  with  what  may  be  called  the 
intimate  features  of  genius.  Hence  he  will 
always  band  his  lovers  together  more  closely 
than  Milton  will.  Dante  societies  already 
exist ;  but  there  is  no  motion  being  made  to 
concentrate  interest  in  Milton. 

But  the  last,  and  probably  the  most  impor- 
tant, reason  for  Milton's  being  considered  infe- 
rior to  Dante  by  so  many  students  of  literature, 
is  the  fact  that  they  are  usually  far  more  stu- 
dents than  lovers  of  the  art  of  poetry.  Dante's 
great  poem  is  fuller  of  symbolical  and  allegori- 
cal content  than  Milton's  is,  and  therefore  af- 
fords more  satisfaction  to  the  inquiring  and 
probing  intellect.  It  is  also  much  fuller  of 
spiritual  significance  of  a  distinctly  personal 
kind,  hence  it  more  strongly  attracts  such  per- 
sons as  make  use  of  poetry  for  moral  and 
spiritual  stimulation.  These  concessions  will 
doubtless  seem  to  many  to  give  away  Milton's 
case,  but  not  so.  Intellectual  satisfaction  and 


WORKS  231 

spiritual  stimulation  ought  to  be  found  in  all 
great  poetry — they  can  be  obtained  from  a 
deep  study  of  "  Paradise  Lost,"  but  they  are 
not  the  raison  d'etre  of  poetical  creation,  nor 
the  main  element  of  true  poetical  enjoyment. 
Poetry  must  be  primarily  aesthetic  in  its  appeal, 
and  it  is  clear  that  objective  art  satisfies  this 
demand  better  than  subjective  art  does.  Hence 
it  is  that  I  rank  the  great  objective  theme  of 
"  Paradise  Lost "  as  better  poetical  material 
than  the  more  subjective,  personal  theme  of 
"The  Divine  Comedy."  The  fact  that  Dante 
commentators  are  forever  talking  of  the  inner 
meaning  of  his  symbolism  means,  in  the  last 
analysis,  that  elements  not  poetic  enter  largely 
into  their  enjoyment  of  the  poem.  It  is  the 
same  with  the  Shakspere  commentators,  who 
are  forever  discussing  psychological  questions 
about  "  Hamlet."  They  are  very  shrewd 
and  interesting  gentlemen,  but  they  seldom 
know  much  about  art  —  if  they  did  they  would 
discuss  "  Othello  "  more  than  they  do  "  Ham- 
let." Of  course  this  is  all  very  rash  —  as  rash, 
perhaps,  as  it  would  be  to  tell  the  Browning 
devotees  that  "Childe  Roland,"  with  its  de- 


232  JOHN   MILTON 

lightful  mystery,  is  not  so  good  a  poem  as  the 
simple  stanzas  beginning  "  You  know  we 
French  stormed  Ratisbon."  People  will  con- 
tinue to  the  end  of  time  to  value  this  poem, 
and  that  for  precisely  the  wrong  reasons,  be- 
cause they  will  persist  in  ignoring  Greek,  that 
is  classic,  standards,  and  in  demanding  mixed 
effects  from  the  arts.  They  tell  us  that  they 
get  fuller  results ;  and  so  they  do,  —  results 
fuller  of  ugliness  and  distortion  than  anything 
that  has  ever  come  down  to  us  from  the 
Greeks.  But  we  seem  to  be  landing  full  in 
the  midst  of  the  controversy  between  the  ad- 
herents of  classic  and  those  of  Gothic  art  — 
perhaps  we  have  been  in  the  midst  of  that 
controversy  ever  since  we  began  to  discuss  the 
merits  of  Milton  and  Dante  —  and  we  may  as 
well  extricate  ourselves  while  we  can,  leaving 
the  task  of  forming  a  Milton  Society  to  the 
next  generation,  which  may  be  a  little  less 
mediaeval  than  we  are. 

But,  after  all,  is  there  not  something  of 
moral  weakness  in  the  failure  of  so  many 
Anglo-Saxons  to  stand  up  manfully  for  Mil- 
ton's superiority  to  all  save  the  two  universal 


WORKS  233 

geniuses  ?  It  is  natural  for  the  peoples  of 
the  Continent  to  venerate  Dante  the  more 
highly,  not  only  because  they  largely  sympa- 
thize with  his  religious  philosophy,  but  also 
because  sublimity  of  character  is  not  one  of 
their  virtues.  The  Anglo-Saxon,  on  the  other  \ 
hand,  though  he  often  sinks  to  the  depths,  is  / 
of  all  men  the  most  capable  of  rising  to  the 
heights;  hence  he  ought  to  comprehend  the 
most  national  of  his  poets.  This  Milton  is. 
He  is  the  literary  embodiment  of  the  sublime 
ideals  that  have  made  English  liberty  the  dream 
of  less  fortunate  peoples ;  he  is  the  fullest 
exponent  of  the  heroism,  the  steadfastness, 
the  irresistible  energy,  that  have  planted  the 
British  outposts  amid  Arctic  snows  and  the 
islands  of  the  Southern  seas.  He  is  the  poet 
of  triumphant  strength ;  his  eye  droops  not 
before  the  Sun  itself ;  his  wings  flag  not  in 
the  rarest  reaches  of  the  upper  ether.  And 
yet  men  speaking  the  English  tongue,  and  pro- 
fessing themselves  to  be  proud  of  the  achieve- 
ments of  their  race,  have  had  the  ineffable 
impertinence  to  speak  slightingly  of  this  mas- 
ter spirit,  and  of  his  master  work. 


CHAPTER   IX 

"PARADISE  REGAINED"  AND  " SAMSON 
AGONISTES  " 

THE  two  great  poems  —  minor  they  are  not 
in  any  true  sense  of  the  term  —  that  form  the 
subject  of  this  chapter  appeared  in  one  volume 
in  1671.  There  is  reason  to  think  that  they 
were  printed  for  Milton  rather  than  published 
by  John  Starkey  on  his  own  account.  At  any 
rate  Mr.  Samuel  Simmons  did  not  figure  in  the 
transaction,  while  the  Rev.  Thomas  Tomkyns, 
the  ecclesiastical  censor,  gave  his  signature  to 
the  license  to  print  with  few  twinges  of  con- 
science. With  regard  to  the  dates  of  compo- 
sition there  is  little  available  information.  If 
Milton  acted  immediately  upon  the  query  of 
Ellwood,  "  But  what  hast  thou  to  say  of  '  Para- 
dise Found/  "  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  shorter 
epic  was  completed  during  the  year  1666,  or 
before  "  Paradise  Lost"  was  published.  As  for 
234 


WORKS  235 

"  Samson,"  no  definite  year  can  be  assigned, 
but  critics  prefer  to  place  it  as  near  1671  as 
they  can,  chiefly  because  its  style  is  supposed 
to  bear  marks  of  old  age.  It  is  hard  to  say 
whether  the  harsh  passages  thus  relied  on  as 
determining  data  are  not  the  result  of  metrical 
experimentation  on  Milton's  part,  and  equally 
hard  to  deny  that  many  passages  show  a  sur- 
prisingly youthful  vigor.  One  may  more  confi- 
dently agree  with  the  critics  on  psychological 
grounds.  "  Samson  "  is  the  pathetic  but  nobly 
strenuous  protest  of  an  old  man  against  an  age 
and  country  that  have  deserted  ideals  precious 
to  him  ;  it  is  the  kind  of  protest  to  which  Mil- 
ton may  have  worked  himself  slowly  up,  as  the 
last  service  he  could  do  mankind.  Besides, 
having  finished  two  epics,  the  aged  poet  may 
have  felt  a  desire  to  carry  out  his  youthful  pur- 
pose of  writing  a  drama  on  a  Scriptural  subject ; 
he  had,  indeed,  thirty  years  before,  considered 
the  propriety  of  writing  two  dramas  on  the 
theme,  and  he  may,  as  one  may  gather  from 
his  preface,  have  desired  both  to  qualify  the 
usual  Puritan  judgment  on  the  drama  and  to 
censure  the  stage-plays  then  holding  the  Lon- 


236  JOHN   MILTON 

don  boards,  as  well  as  most  of  those  that  had 
hitherto  been  produced  in  England.  Be  this 
as  it  may,  the  two  poems  must  have  added  to 
Milton's  reputation  and  suggested  by  their  nu- 
merous misprints  the  misfortune  of  their  author. 
As  might  have  been  expected,  critics  have 
differed  greatly  over  "  Paradise  Regained."  It 
is  often  said  that  Milton  preferred  it  to  "  Para- 
dise Lost,"  whereas  he  seems  merely  to  have 
disliked  to  hear  it  slightingly  treated  in  com- 
parison with  the  more  elaborate  poem.  In  this 
he  was  entirely  right.  "  Paradise  Regained"  is 
not,  as  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  thought,  Mil- 
ton's most  perfectly  executed  work,  but  it  is,  as 
its  author  seems  to  have  perceived,  thoroughly 
sui  generis,  a  masterpiece  to  be  judged  after  its 
own  kind.  The  reading  public  has  not  taken 
to  it  because  of  a  preconceived  notion  that  as  a 
sequel  to  "Paradise  Lost"  it  ought  to  continue 
the  style  and  general  interest  of  that  great 
work.  This,  however,  Milton  never  intended 
that  it  should  do.  He  seized  upon  Christ's 
temptation  by  Satan  —  relying  on  the  accounts 
given  in  Matt.  iv.  and  Luke  iv.,  particularly  in 
the  latter  —  as  a  parallel  to  the  temptation  of 


<&KS**>  k 

UNIVERSITY  * 


Eve  and  Adam,  and  resolved  that  in  Christ's 
triumph  he  would  shadow  forth  Satan's  ulti- 
mate defeat  and  the  final  acquisition  of  Para- 
dise by  Adam's  race.  He  will  have  little  or  no 
action,  but  will  rely  in  great  measure  upon  the 
effects  produced  by  the  speeches  put  in  the 
mouths  of  the  protagonists.  He  hardly  tells  a 
story ;  he  reports  an  argument  in  the  issue  of 
which  the  sequel  of  the  first  epic  is  found.  It 
is  evident,  then,  that  to  judge  the  second  poem 
properly,  one  must  in  many  respects  dissociate 
it  entirely  from  the  first,  and  ask  one's  self 
whether  Milton  could  possibly  have  succeeded 
better  in  the  task  he  undertook. 

It  is  hard  to  see  how  he  could  have  done  so, 
or  how,  with  the  materials  at  hand,  he  could 
have  constructed  an  epic  on  the  plan  of  "  Para- 
dise Lost."     We  need  not  call  the  sequel  an 
epic  at  all  unless  we  are  inclined  to  agree  with 
Masson,  who   follows   Milton,  in    holding   that 
I  there  are   two   kinds  of  epic,   one  diffuse,  the 
[  other   brief.     Neither   need  we   look   to   Giles 
Fletcher's  "Christ's  Victory  and  Triumph,"  or 
to  other  poems,  for  Milton's  model.     He  meant 
[his  second  poem  to  be  a   spiritual   exposition 


238  JOHN   MILTON 

\  of  a  transcendent  truth ;  he  had  made  his  for- 
mer poem  a  sublime  setting  forth  of  an  empy- 
rean and  cosmical  catastrophe.  As  he  succeeded 
beyond  expectation  in  his  earlier  task,  it  is  idle 
to  talk  of  the  later  poem  as  his  most  perfect 
work  of  art,  for  it  accomplishes  its  purpose  no 
better  than  "  Paradise  Lost "  fulfils  its  mission, 
and  it  is  obviously  inferior  in  power  and  scope. 
But  of  its  kind  it  is  far  more  admirable  than 
general  readers  seem  to  know.  Even  Dr.  Gar- 
nett  hardly  does  it  justice  when  he  asserts  that 
it  occasionally  becomes  jejune.  From  first  to 
last  its  tone  is  that  of  poised  nobility,  which 

1  takes  on  at  times  a  note  of  the  richest  elo- 
quence known  to  verse.  Sublimity  is  nowhere 
to  be  found ;  but  poised  nobility  is  no  despica- 
ble substitute  for  it.  Charm,  too,  is  present, 
although  not  to  the  same  extent  as  in  "  Para- 
dise Lost"  or  in  "Comus."  But  the  peculiar 
note  indicated  is  so  perfect  and  so  unique  in 
literature,  that  the  popular  depreciation  that 
has  attended  the  poem  seems  to  cast  a  sinister 
light  upon  Anglo-Saxon  capacity  to  appreciate 
at  least  the  subtler  phases  of  the  poetic  art. 
As  a  matter  of  course  the  mere  interest  of 


WORKS  239 

the  poem  is  slight.  Satan,  though  eloquent  and 
not  yet  stripped  of  his  native  dignity  as  "  Arch- 
angel ruin'd,"  is  not  the  wonder-compelling 
protagonist  of  the  great  epic.  The  victorious 
Christ  is  too  consistently  self-poised  and 
confident  of  triumph  to  serve  as  a  properly 
suffering  hero,  but  as  Dr.  Garnett,  whom  one 
never  tires  of  quoting,  aptly  says,  "  It  is  enough, 

1  and  it  is  wonderful,  that  spotless  virtue  should 

I  be  so  entirely  exempt  from  formality  and  dul- 
ness."  In  other  words,  Milton  makes  the  most 
of  his  two  characters  in  the  situations  found  for 
him  in  Holy  Writ.  He  can  display  his  con- 

jstructive  invention  far  less  than  in  "Paradise 
Lost,"  but,  as  in  the  latter  poem,  the  blame  must 
be  laid  on  the  theme  not  on  the  poet.  He  does 

vdisplay  to  the  utmost  what  may  be  called  his 
'unfolding  invention.  The  splendid  panoramas 
beheld  from  the  "  specular  mount "  are  an 
instance  of  this  power  perhaps  unequalled  in 
literature,  and  with  this  portion  of  the  poem 
at  least  the  world  is  familiar.  The  description 
of  Athens  is  probably  best  known,  but  if  it  sur- 
passes that  of  the  Parthian  array  and  if  the 
latter  surpasses  that  of  the  Rome  of  Tiberius, 


240  JOHN   MILTON 

the  difference  is  like  that  between  three  ap- 
parently perfect  autumn  days.  Almost  every 
poetical  resource  is  brought  into  play,  and  if 
the  rhythm  is  less  compelling,  the  diction  less 
I  majestic  than  is  the  case  with  the  sublimest  pas- 
sages of  "  Paradise  Lost,"  it  is  because  the  three 
themes  while  royally  noble  were  not  super- 
humanly  grand.  The  art  of  the  later  poem  may 
truly  be  said  to  be  perfect  of  its  kind ;  but  it  is 
not  the  supreme  kind.  In  one  respect,  however, 
the  poet's  art  has  neither  changed  nor  dete- 
riorated. The  wonderful  use  of  proper  names 
in  "  Paradise  Lost "  is  completely  paralleled  in 
"  Paradise  Regained."  Take  only  the  passage, 

"  From  Arachosia,  from  Candaor  east, 
And  Margiana,  to  the  Hyrcanian  cliffs 
Of  Caucasus,  and  dark  Iberian  dales  ; 
From  Atropatia,  and  the  neighboring  plains 
Of  Adiabene,  Media,  and  the  South 
Of  Susiana  to  Balsara's  haven." 

But  the  typical  note  of  poised  dignity  is  not 
exemplified  in  these  lines  nor  in  that  wonder- 
fully beautiful  passage,  haunted  literally  by 

"  Knights  of  Logres,  or  of  Lyones, 
Launcelot,  or  Pelleas,  or  Pellenore." 


WORKS  241 

Not  in  such  truly  "  oraculous  gems  "  do  we  find 
the  note  of  the  poem,  but  rather  in  the  simple 
diction  and  satisfying  rhythm  of  lines  like 
these :  — 

"  111  wast  thou  shrouded  then, 
O  patient  Son  of  God,  yet  only  stood'st 
Unshaken !    Nor  yet  stayed  the  terror  there  : 
Infernal  ghosts  and  hellish  furies  round 
Environed  thee  ;  some  howled,  some  yelled,  some  shrieked, 
Some  bent  at  thee  their  fiery  darts,  while  thou 
Sat'st  unappalled  in  calm  and  sinless  peace." 

Or  to  take  a  lower  level  and  thus  give  our- 
selves the  pleasure  of  another  quotation  from  a 
work  that  deserved  from  its  author  the  love  that 
Jacob  had  for  Benjamin,  we  find  the  note  of 
poised  nobility  in  these  words  of  Christ :  — 

"  To  know,  and,  knowing,  worship  God  aright 
Is  yet  more  kingly.     This  attracts  the  soul, 
Governs  the  inner  man,  the  nobler  part ; 
That  other  o'er  the  body  only  reigns, 
And  oft  by  force  —  which  to  a  generous  mind 
So  reigning  can  be  no  sincere  delight." 

Turning  now  to  "  Samso^  \ Agonistes  "  we 
should  notice  that  if  it  has  n^Ver  been  a  very 
popular  poem,  it  has  always  been  spoken  of  with 


242  JOHN   MILTON 

the  highest  respect.  Even  Milton's  Puritan 
contemporaries,  though  they  might  not  have 
understood  his  defence  of  the  Greek  drama  any 
more  than  some  of  his  admirers  have  been  able 
to  understand  or  forgive  his  hypothetical  change 
of  heart  with  regard  to  Shakspere,  would  have 
been  hard  put  to  it  to  show  how  any  uninspired 
writer  could  have  produced  a  more  essentially 
righteous  and  noble  work  of  the  imagination. 
Just  so  from  Milton's  day  to  our  own  it  has 
been  impossible,  as  Goethe  admitted,  to  point  to 
any  piece  of  modern  literature  more  thoroughly 
Greek  in  form  and  even  Greek  in 'spirit.  The 
theme  is  Hebrew  and  the  spirit,  too,  yet  some- 
how the  latter  is  also  Greek  in  spite  of  the 
presence  of  Milton's  characteristic  diction. 
fit  may,  indeed,  be  contended  that  the  theme 
of  "  Samson  "  hampered  Milton  less  than  the 
themes  of  any  of  his  other  great  poems.  It  was 
exactly  suited  for  dramatic  treatment  after  the 
Greek  fashion,  and  it  fitted  in  with  Milton's  own 
temperament  and  experience.  j_He,  too,  as  every 
critic  has  pointed  out,  had  married  a  wife  of 
Philistine  parentage  and  had  suffered  untold 
misery  by  her ;  he,  too,  was  living  blind  and  help- 


WORKS  243 

less  in  a  state  that  worshipped  not  the  true 
God;  he,  too,  if  he  could  not  like  Samson  de- 
stroy the  rulers  of  that  people,  would  still  cherish 
the  hope  that  the  English  Puritans  would  one 
day  rise  in  their  might  and  accomplish  the  pious 
work.  What  wonder,  then,  that  Milton  should 
have  turned  such  a  theme  to  account  in  his  old 
age,  and  how  idle  to  suppose  that  Vondel's 
" Samson"  influenced  him  appreciably. 

But  the  peculiar  dramatic  form  suited  Mil- 
ton almost  as  well  as  the  theme.  It  required 
few  characters,  and  thus  his  inability,  which 
we  noticed  in  "  Comus,"  to  create  inevitable, 
objective  personages,  did  him  little  harm. 
Samson  was  himself,  or  else  incarnate  Puri- 
tanism ;  the  chorus  did  not  need  to  be  person^ 
alized;  and  with  Manoah,  Delilah,  the  giant 
Harapha  of  Gath,  the  officer,  and  the  mes- 
senger, little  play  of  character  was  required. 
Hence,  although  his  weakness  is  perhaps  ap- 
parent in  a  few  passages,  the  strength  and 
lifelikeness  of  his  play  are  indisputably  splen- 
did. With  a  fuller  action  and  more  characters 
it  may  be  questioned  whether  he  would  have 
succeeded  so  well  ;  hence  his  choice  of  the 


244  J°HN   MILTON 

Greek  form  was  not  only  consistent  with  his 
developed  prejudice  against  the  looser  Eng- 
lish drama,  but  was  also  a  clear  proof  of  his 
artistic  prescience. 

His  artistic  inventiveness  was  also  displayed 
in  "  Samson "  in  marked  measure,  not  only 
in  his  use  of  the  incident  of  Harapha's  dis- 
comfiture, as  Dr.  Garnett  has  pointed  out,  but 
also  in  the  metrical  construction  of  the  admira- 
ble choruses. 

He  explained  his  metrical  innovations  in  his 
preface  in  a  luciis  a  non  lucendo  way  by  using 
learned  Greek  terms,  which  resolve  themselves 
into  the  statement  that  he  either  avoids  stan- 
zaic  divisions,  or  else  makes  his  stanzas  irreg- 
ular, and  that  inside  a  stanza  he  adopts  any 
sort  of  line  or  verse  he  chooses.  The  result  of 
his  procedure  has  been  that  it  requires  a  care- 
fully trained  ear  to  appreciate  the  harmonies 
!of  most  of  the  choruses.  To  many  readers 
they  degenerate  into  prose ;  but  in  view  of  the 
correctness  of  Milton's  ear,  and  his  unequalled 
command  of  rhythmical  and  metrical  resources, 
it  is  unsafe  for  any  one  to  pronounce  any  pas- 
sage prosaic.  The  truth  is,  rather,  that  Milton 


WORKS  245 

has  far  surpassed  all  other  English  poets  in 
\  producing  lyrical  effects  without  rhymes,  a 
few  of  which  are,  however,  scattered  through 
the  poem :  and  that,  if  we  fail  to  catch  the 
harmonies  hidden  in  his  verses,  the  fault  is 
our  own.  Yet  it  may  be  granted,  perhaps,  that 
in  some  cases  he  has  followed  the  Italian  plan 
of  mixing  verses  of  various  lengths,  more  con- 
sistently than  is  advisable  in  English,  for, 
after  all,  a  poem  is  meant  to  be  read,  and  the 
poet  must,  more  or  less,  consult  the  capacities 
of  his  readers. 

With  regard,  now,  to  the  rank  of  "Samson" 
among  Milton's  poems,  there  is  little  reason 
to  agree  with  Macaulay  in  rating  it  below 
"Comus."  Dr.  Garnett  inclines  to  put  the  two 
poems  on  a  level.  Patiisna,  after  explaining 
how  Dr.  Johnson  could  think  "  Samson "  a 
"tragedy  which  only  ignorance  would  admire, 
and  bigotry  applaud,"  followed  up  his  own 
unsympathetic  treatment  of  "  Paradise  Re- 
gained"  by  observing  that  "while,  for  the 
biographer  of  Milton  '  Samson  Agonistes '  is 
charged  with  a  pathos  which,  as  the  expres- 
sion of  real  suffering,  no  fictive  tragedy  can 


246  JOHN  MILTON 

equal,  it  must  be  felt  that,  as  a  composition,  the 
drama  is  languid,  nerveless,  occasionally  halt- 
ing, never  brilliant.  "^"Against  this  uncalled- 
for  depreciation  we  may  well  set  Goethe's- 
praise,  and  remark  that  a  successful  treat- 
ment of  any  theme  in  the  fashion  of  the 
Greek  drama  could  not  possibly  be  languid 
and  nerveless.  ^*£ he  fact,  indeed,  seems  to  be 
that,  in  intensity  of  power,  "  Samson "  is  as 
preeminent  as  "  Paradise  Lost  "  is  in  sublim- 
ity, "Paradise  Regained"  in  poised  nobility, 
and  "  Comus "  in  nobility  fused  with  charm. 
If  this  be  true,  Milton's  latest  dramatic  effort 
should  rank  above  his  first,  though  it  be  far 
less  popular.  It  might  almost  be  held  that 
the  "  Samson "  is  the  most  intensely  powerful 
of  the  great  English  tragedies  except  "  Lear," 
which  is  universal  in  its  stormy  passion,  while 
"Samson"  is  more  national  and  individual/"' If 
the  poem  shows  the  signs  of  age,  as  Pattison 
maintains,  it  shows  them  as  an  aging  gladiator 
might  do  —  the  thews  and  muscles  stand  rigidly 
out,  unclothed  by  youthful  flesh.  But  the 
power,  if  naked,  is  all  the  more  conspicuous 
and  impressive. 


WORKS  247 

In  conclusion,  let  us  take  leave  of  this  poem, 
as  of  its  companion,  "Paradise  Regained,"  by 
recalling  two  passages  typical  of  its  spirit.  The 
first  is  from  a  chorus :  — 

"  O,  how  comely  it  is,  and  how  reviving 
To  the  spirits  of  just  men  long  oppressed, 
When  God  into  the  hands  of  their  deliverer 
Puts  invincible  might, 

To  quell  the  mighty  of  the  earth,  the  oppressor, 
The  brute  and  boisterous  force  of  violent  men, 
Hardy  and  industrious  to  support 
Tyrannic  power,  but  raging  to  pursue 
The  righteous,  and  all  such  as  honor  truth! 
He  all  their  ammunition 
And  feats  of  war  defeats, 
With  plain  heroic  magnitude  of  mind 
And  celestial  vigor  armed ; 
Their  armories  and  magazines  contemns, 
Renders  them  useless,  while 
With  winged  expedition 
Swift  as  the  lightning  glance  he  executes 
His  errand  on  the  wicked,  who,  surprised, 
Lose  their  defence,  distracted  and  amazed." 

Traces  of  senility  are  hardly  to  be  discovered 
in  this  passage,  or  in  the  following,  which 
will  serve  to  illustrate  the  staple  blank  verse 
of  the  drama :  — 


248  JOHN  MILTON 

"  But  what  more  oft,  in  nations  grown  corrupt, 
And  by  their  vices  brought  to  servitude, 
Than  to  love  bondage  more  than  liberty  — 
Bondage  with  ease  than  strenuous  liberty  — 
And  to  despise,  or  envy,  or  suspect, 
Whom  God  hath  of  his  special  favor  raised 
As  their  deliverer  ?     If  he  aught  begin, 
How  frequent  to  desert  him,  and  at  last 
To  heap  ingratitude  on  worthiest  deeds  ! " 


CHAPTER  X 

MILTON'S  ART 

IT  is  quite  obvious  that  a  chapter  with  the 
above  caption  is  a  bold  undertaking  and  one 
that  is  doomed  from  the  beginning  to  partial 
or  complete  failure.  Even  a  book  would  not  ex- 
haust the  subject  of  Milton's  art,  especially  in 
these  days  when  it  would  be  likely  to  consist  in 
large  measure  of  statistical  tables.  Then,  again, 
there  is  practically  nothing  new  to  be  said  about 
a  topic  upon  which  critics  great  and  small  have 
exhausted  themselves  from  the  days  of  Patrick 
Hume  to  those  of  Professor  Masson.  Yet  to 
close  a  study  such  as  the  present  without  an 
attempt  to  sum  up  the  general  artistic  powers 
of  the  great  poet  with  whom  it  has  dealt,  would 
be  to  leave  the  whole  undertaking  somewhat 
in  the  air ;  a  result  in  which  it  would  be  cow- 
ardly to  acquiesce  without  a  struggle  or  at  least 
a  dignified  effort. 

249 


2$0  JOHN    MILTON 

But  what  now  do  we  mean  by  saying  thai- 
Milton  was  a  great  artist?  We  may  ^ean 
many  things,  but  we  certainly  mean  chat  he 
was  careful  in  selecting  and  ordering  the  mate- 
rials out  of  which  he  composed  his  works,  and 
that  he  was  particular  in  joining  these  materials 
together  and  in  preparing  them  for  the  joining 
process.  To  speak  more  concretely,  we  mean 
that  he  took  great  pains  with  his  choice  and 
evolution  of  theme,  that  he  thought  out  the 
details  of  his  composition  from  a  logical  point 
of  view,  and  that  in  addition  to  this  care  about 
the  thought-matter  of  his  poems  or  their  sub- 
stance, he  paid  great  attention  to  the  word-mat- 
ter, whether  from  the  points  of  view  of  diction, 
syntax,  metrical  rhythm,  or  harmony;  that  is 
to  say,  to  the  form  of  his  poems.  This  .is,  of 
course,  a  commonplace  statement,  but  the  two- 
fold division  it  contains  will  furnish  us  with  a 
good  point  of  departure. 

With  regard  to  his  choice  of  materials,  Mil- 
ton, as  we  have  observed,  showed  the  caution 
that  befits  the  scholar  and  the  man,  who,  con- 
scious of  great  powers,  is  determined  to  excel 
supereminently.  He  was  never  a  hasty  writer. 


WORKS  251 

Up  to  the  time  of  the  composition  of  the  "  Epi- 
taphium  Damonis,"  i.e.  his  thirty-second  year, 
he  had  produced  what  is,  on  the  whole,  a  small 
body  of  verse  for  a  poet  so  gifted,  and  had  for  a 
considerable  portion  of  it  relied  upon  external 
stimulation  to  production  rather  than  upon  in- 
ward prompting.  In  other  words,  if  Lawes  had 
not  been  Milton's  friend  and  if  King  had  not 
died,  the  minor  poems  would  not  now  be  pre- 
ferred by  some  critics  to  "Paradise  Lost." 
During  the  twenty  years  of  prose  writing,  com- 
puting roughly,  external  stimulation  was  again 
the  rule,  as  is  evidenced  both  by  the  pam- 
phlets and  by  the  sonnets.  "  Paradise  Lost  "  is 
the  first  important  work  representing  Milton's 
own  creative  impulse,  and  "  Samson  Agonistes  " 
is  the  second,  for  Ellwood  suggested  "  Paradise 
Regained"  and  the  theological,  historical,  and 
grammatical  treatises  are  hardly  to  be  consid- 
ered in  this  connection. 

As  we  have  seen  and  as  it  has  been  fre- 
quently shown  for  the  past  two  hundred  years, 
Milton  brought  to  bear  on  each  subject,  whether 
chosen  by  himself  or  not,  the  full  weight  of  his 
learning  and  the  full  force  of  his  conscience. 


252  JOHN   MILTON 

We  have  ocular  proof  that  he  was  a  careful 
reviser  and  that  he  improved  what  he  altered ; 
he  packed  whatever  he  wrote  with  erudition, 
sifted  and  fitted  in  to  his  purpose ;  and  he 
studied  the  technic  and  the  details  of  his  art. 
He  innovated  and  experimented,  and  in  short 
prefaces  explained  his  methods  of  composition. 
The  result  is  that  the  more  minute  the  student, 
the  more  he  becomes  convinced  that  Milton 
could  have  given  a  reason  for  every  detail  of 
his  work,  even  for  his  minor  variations  from  the 
normal  types  of  his  blank  verse  lines.  This  is 
not  to  say  that  Milton  composed  with  meticu- 
lous care  when  the  impulse  of  composition  was 
upon  him,  but  that  the  rules  of  his  art  had  be- 
come a  second  nature  to  him  and  that  his  taste 
was  as  perfect  as  a  finite  man's  can  be.  In 
other  words,  the  more  one  studies  Milton  the 
more  loath  one  becomes  to  find  fault  with  a 
passage,  a  line,  a  word,  —  the  more  one  comes 
to  believe  that  Milton  as  an  artist  is  practically 
flawless. 

But  we  have  already  examined  in  some  de- 
tail Milton's  themes  and  have  commented  upon 
their  evolution  as  well  as  upon  the  great  use  he 


WORKS  253 

made  of  the  work  of  other  men  in  carrying  out 
his  own  designs.  We  have  mentioned  also, 
time  and  again,  the  power  by  which  the  sub- 
stance of  his  works  is  fused  into  a  poetic  whole 
—  the  power  of  his  shaping  imagination.  An 
attempt  to  describe  Milton's  imagination  would 
be  impertinent,  for  it  would  require  an  almost 
equal  imagination  for  its  successful  accomplish- 
ment. It  may,  however,  be  noted  that  Milton's 
imagination  seems  to  affect  the  substance  of  his 
works  by  limiting  it  to  that  which  is  noble,  sub- 
lime, strenuous,  or  elementally  pure  and  there- 
fore charming.  Humor  is  thus  practically 
excluded  as  well  as  the  intimate  human  note 
to  be  found  in  Dante  and  Shakspere.  Pathos 
and  sympathy  exist,  as,  for  example,  in  the  ex- 
quisite closing  passage  of  "  Paradise  Lost "  ;  but 
the  normal  majesty  of  the  action  in  each  of  the 
greater  poems  reduces  these  qualities  to  a  mini- 
mum. In  the  same  way,  however  much  we  may 
admire,  with  Tennyson,  the  paradisaic  charm  of 
the  descriptions  of  Eden,  we  must  admit  that 
it  is  the  product  of  an  imagination  that  does  not 
haunt  the  earth  that  lesser  mortals  tread.  Mil- 
ton's genius  moves  more  freely  in  empyrean 


254  JOHN   MILTON 

and  cosmical  spaces,  and  if  his  imagination  is 
limited  as  regards  certain  peculiarly  human 
spheres,  it  is  nevertheless  limitless  in  its  own 
proper  domain.  Hence  it  is  that  in  the  Pande- 
monium scenes  Milton  attains  to  a  strenuous 
sublimity  that  is  probably  unrivalled  in  litera- 
ture. Hence,  too,  when  his  imagination  utters 
itself  in  tropes  and  figures,  little  is  definite  or 
precise ;  or  if  precision  be  demanded,  the  spa- 
tial dimensions  are  large  or  the  setting  in  time 
is  indefinite,  grand,  unusual,  or  mysterious.  This 
last  point  may  be  well  illustrated  by  two  exam- 
ples taken  from  "Paradise  Lost." 

Satan  is  not,  with  Milton,  the  three-faced 
monster  whose  arms  in  length  are  to  the  height 
of  a  giant  more  than  the  latter's  stature  is  to 
that  of  Dante ;  he  lifts  his  head  above  the  waves 

and 

"  his  other  parts  besides 

Prone  on  the  flood,  extended  long  and  large," 

lie  floating  many  a  rood,  as  huge  in  bulk  as 
Briareos  or  Typhon  or  "  that  sea-beast  Levia- 
than." Here  we  see  that  the  description  is  at 
first  purely  indefinite,  and  that,  when  a  precise 
comparison  is  made,  it  is  of  such  a  nature  that 


WORKS  255 

no  increase  of  definiteness  is  really  attained. 
So,  too,  with  regard  to  the  setting  in  time. 
The  description  of  the  splendor  of  Pandemo- 
nium is  at  first  effected  by  means  of  details 
which  are  concrete  only  in  appearance,  and  is 
then  made  impressive  by  a  negative  contrast 
with  the  grand  architecture  of  far-away  ancient 
peoples. 

"  Not  Babylon 

Nor  grand  Alcairo  such  magnificence 
Equalled  in  all  their  glories,  to  enshrine 
Belus  or  Serapis  their  gods,  or  seat 
Their  kings,  when  Egypt  with  Assyria  strove 
In  wealth  and  luxury." 

The  latter  quotation  naturally  leads  us  to  con- 
sider Milton's  wonderful  use  of  proper  names, 
and  so  carries  us  over  from  the  substance  of  his 
poetry  to  its  form,  to  its  diction,  syntax,  and 
rhythm. 

The  ability  to  weave  proper  names  into  artistic 
verse  has  always  been  considered  a  good  test  of 
a  poet's  powers.  This  is  due  in  considerable 
part  to  the  fact  that  we  realize  how  difficult  the 
task  is  and  hence  rejoice  as  much  in  its  success- 
ful accomplishment  as  we  do  when  a  poet  tri- 


256  JOHN   MILTON 

umphs  over  the  intricacies  of  the  sonnet  con- 
struction. Another  reason  for  the  pleasure 
given  us  by  the  Miltonic  employment  of  proper 
names  is  found  in  the  fact  that  they  are  nearly 
always  full  of  allusive  charm  or  power  and  thus 
unlock  emotions  previously  stored  up  in  us. 
This  is  perhaps  the  prime  secret  of  the  wonder- 
ful effects  produced  by  such  a  passage  as  that 
already  quoted  from  "  Paradise  Regained " 
beginning  — 

"  From  Arachosia,  from  Candaor  east," 

unless,  indeed,  the  names  are  unknown  to  us 
and  give  us  a  sense  of  mysterious  pleasure  on 
the  principle  expressed  by  the  adage,  omne 
ignotum  pro  magnifico.  There  is  another  charm, 
too,  never  absent  from  the  Miltonic  roll  of 
names  —  the  charm  of  subtle  harmony,  and  the 
difficulty  with  which  this  is  attained  enhances 
its  power  over  us.  It  almost  seems  as  if  Mil- 
ton recognized  these  facts  from  his  youth,  for 
although  his  ability  to  use  proper  names  culmi- 
nated in  his  mature  poems,  it  is  found  in  his  ear- 
liest experiments.  At  least  it  is  evident  that  it 
brought  his  erudition  most  happily  into  play, 


WORKS  257 

and  that  it   is  one  of  the   most  characteristic 
features  of  his  style. 

With  regard  now  to  his  diction  in  general 
there  is  nothing  to  say  that  is  not  already 
familiar.  His  total  vocabulary  is  but  little  over 
half  that  of  Shakspere ;  but  this  does  not  mean 
much  when  we  remember  that  Milton  was  the 
more  careful  artist  and  that  whole  ranges  of 
Shakspere's  work,  such  as  the  scenes  of  low 
comedy,  were  outside  of  the  later  poet's  purview. 
Besides,  Shakspere  wrote  in  a  period  famous  for 
the  flexibility  of  its  vocabulary,  and  the  number 
of  words  employed  by  him  that  have  lost  cur- 
rency seems  to  be  greater  by  a  considerable 
amount  than  the  number  of  similar  words  in  the 
case  of  Milton  as  a  poet.  It  is  more  important 
to  observe  that  if  Milton's  poetic  diction  does 
not,  like  Shakspere's,  suggest  the  idea  of  lavish 
affluence,  it  never  suggests  poverty,  but  rather 
just  proportion.  The  chances  are  that  Milton's 
knowledge  of  words  was  as  large  as  Shak- 
spere's, but  that  the  nature  of  his  subjects  and 
the  purity  of  his  taste  limited  his  use  to  what  is 
nevertheless  a  very  considerable  number.  Of 
the  words  he  does  employ  quite  a  large  propor- 


2 $8  JOHN   MILTON 

tion  will  naturally  be  found  to  be  of  Romance 
or  Latin  rather  than  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin. 
With  his  themes  it  could  not  well  have  been 
otherwise ;  besides  the  longer  Latinistic  words 
conduced  to  the  desiderated  sonorousness,  of  his 
verse.  Yet,  as  Masson  has  well  shown,  the 
Saxon  words  are  those  most  frequently  used, 
amounting  in  some  passages  to  ninety  per  cent 
and  rarely  falling  below  seventy.  Hence  his 
poetry,  for  all  his  erudition,  is  English  in  its 
warp  and  woof. 

With  regard  to  his  syntax,  the  case  is  some- 
what different.  The  influence  of  the  masses  of 
Latin  that  he  read  and  wrote  is  plainly  percepti- 
ble in  the  closely  knit,  involved,  and  often  peri- 
odic and  lengthy  sentences  in  which  his  mature 
works  abound.  This  is  not  true  of  many  of 
the  earlier  poems,  such  as  "  L' Allegro,"  which 
have  a  looseness  and  directness  of  syntactical 
arrangement  that  are  both  English  and  Eliza- 
bethan. Even  in  "  Comus  "  -and  "  Lycidas," 
which  are  by  no  means  wanting  in  Latinisms, 
there  are  few  passages  that  exhibit  the  involu- 
tion characteristic  of  "  Paradise  Lost."  This 
involution  is,  indeed,  practically  unmatched  in 


WORKS  259 

our  poetry.  It  finds  little  place  in  the  work 
of  Shakspere,  who,  while  capable  of  every  sort 
of  style,  and  full  of  syntactical  resources,  is  in 
the  main  straightforward,  not  to  say  loose,  in 
the  construction  of  his  sentences.  This  very 
looseness,  culminating,  as  it  often  does,  in  an 
impetuous  piling  up  of  ideas  or  images,  fre- 
quently renders  Shakspere  difficult  reading, 
especially  to  young  persons;  but  his  most 
tangled  passages  seldom  strain  the  attention 
and  the  powers  of  comprehension  of  his  read- 
ers as  fairly  normal  passages  of  "  Paradise 
Lost"  strain  Milton's  would-be  admirers. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  this  fact 
accounts  for  much  of  Milton's  comparative 
unpopularity.  But  is  his  syntax  at  fault  ?  It 
surely  is,  if  we  may  apply  strictly  Mr.  Her- 
bert Spencer's  principle,  that  it  is  necessary 
to  economize  the  reader's  powers  of  atten- 
tion. Yet  this  principle  cannot  apply  to  po- 
etry, if  it  can  be  shown  that  the  poet's  style, 
while  straining  the  average  reader's  attention, 
really  assists  the  capable  imagination.  And 
Milton's  involved  diction  does  this.  His  unique 
themes  require  a  unique  style.  If  he  had  dealt 


260  JOHN  MILTON 

with  human  beings,  as  Shakspere  did,  he  would 
doubtless  have  used  a  more  straightforward 
style ;  but  he  needed  to  get  his  readers  away 

from 

"  the  smoke  and  stir  of  this  dim  spot 

Which  men  call  Earth," 

and  therefore  he  required  a  style  not  natural 
or  familiar  to  them.  Their  mental  energies 
once  engaged,  he  could  count  the  more  surely 
upon  stimulating  their  imaginations,  and  could 
then  lift  them  up  on  the  wings  of  his  supreme 
genius  into  the  heaven  of  heavens.  Long,  in- 
volved, periodic  sentences  also  helped  him  to 
obtain  sonorousness,  and,  as  we  shall  soon  see, 
were  essential  to  the  full  success  of  his  blank 
verse.  Besides,  his  Latinistic  syntax  removed 
his  style  still  further  from  that  of  prose,  thus 
making  it  essentially  poetic,  and  better  capable 
of  bearing  the  weight  imposed  upon  it  by  the 
sublime  structure  he  was  intent  upon  rearing. 
That  Milton,  in  particular  passages,  pushed 
the  principle  of  involution  too  far,  has,  indeed, 
been  admitted  by  his  greatest  admirers ;  but 
against  such  admissions  we  must  always  set 
his  own  almost  flawless  taste.  The  "  grand 


WORKS  26l 

style "  Mr.  Arnold  was  so  fond  of  praising, 
would  not  have  wholly  disappeared  from 
"  Paradise  Lost  "  had  that  poem  been  written 
in  a  straightforward,  uninvolved  manner,  but 
its  occurrence  would  have  been  much  rarer ; 
it  certainly  would  not  have  been  found  on 
every  page. 

But  an  example  will  prove  more  than  sev- 
eral pages  of  critical  exposition.  Let  the 
reader  imagine  the  following  passage,  or  any 
similar  one,  stripped  of  its  involution,  and 
divided  up  into  comparatively  short,  straight- 
forward sentences ! 

"  Not  that  fair  field 

Of  Enna,  where  Proserpin  gathering  flowers, 
Herself  a  fairer  flower,  by  gloomy  Dis 
Was  gathered  —  which  cost  Ceres  all  that  pain 
To  seek  her  through  the  world  —  nor  that  sweet  grove 
Of  Daphne,  by  Orontes  and  the  inspired 
Castalian  spring,  might  with  this  Paradise 
Of  Eden  strive  ;  nor  that  Nyseian  isle 
Girt  with  the  river  Triton,  where  old  Cham, 
Whom  Gentiles  Ammon  call  and  Libyan  Jove, 
Hid  Amalthea,  and  her  florid  Son, 
Young  Bacchus,  from  his  stepdame  Rhea's  eye ; 
Nor,  where  Abassin  kings  their  issue  guard, 


262  JOHN    MILTON 

Mount  Amara  (though  this  by  some  supposed 

True  Paradise)  under  the  Ethiop  line 

By  Nilus'  head,  enclosed  with  shining  rock, 

A  whole  day's  journey  high,  but  wide  remote 

From  this  Assyrian  garden,  where  the  Fiend 

Saw  undelighted  all  delight,  all  kind 

Of  living  creatures  new  to  sight  and  strange." 

It  will  be  observed  that  this  sentence,  while 
lengthy  and  marked  by  involution  and  strict 
syntax,  is  periodic  only  in  its  first  section.  The 
addition  of  the  two  other  sections,  each  begin- 
ning with  "nor,"  makes  it,  in  the  technical 
sense,  "loose,"  and  this  is  the  case  with  many 
of  the  longer  sentences.  But  Milton,  who  was 
as  careful  of  his  punctuation  as  of  his  spelling, 
must  have  had  some  reason  for  making  such 
sentences  trail,  and  it  may  be  presumed  that 
this  reason  is  to  be  found  in  a  metrical  consider- 
ation. He  did  not  wish  the  reader  to  pause 
any  longer  than  was  necessary  for  the  purpose 
of  breathing,  but  to  go  straight  on  and  thus 
allow  the  passage  to  produce  the  effects  of 
metrical  unity.  For  as  Wordsworth  perceived 
long  ago,  the  Miltonic  blank  verse  does  not 
move  by  lines  but  by  passages  of  varying 


WORKS  263 

lengths.  In  the  manipulation  of  such  passages 
Milton  is  unique  and  supreme.  They  are  long, 
short,  and  of  medium  length,  and  are  infinitely 
varied  in  their  succession ;  and  in  their  manage- 
ment, if  anywhere,  the  secret  of  Milton's  organ 
music  is  to  be  found.  Not  that  individual  lines 
and  small  groups  of  lines  are  not  harmonious 
and  sonorous  —  for  they  plainly  are.  But  the 
rhythmic  and  harmonic  effects  of  these  parts 
of  the  whole  rhythmic  period  blend  into  the 
grander  rhythmic  and  harmonic  effect  of  the 
period  itself,  and  our  reading  is  faulty  if  it  does 
not  bring  out  this  fuller  and  final  effect.  When 
we  compare  Milton's  blank  verse  with  that  of 
most  other  English  poets  except  Shakspere, 
we  find  either  that  the  period  hardly  exists  for 
us  or  that  it  exists  on  a  much  less  varied  and 
noble  scale.  For  example,  in  Thomson  the 
periods  constantly  include  but  three  or  four 
verses,  and  end  at  the  close  of  a  verse  with  a 
uniformity  that  Milton  avoids. 

But  we  are  now  fairly  upon  one  of  the  most 
fascinating  and  intricate  problems  connected 
with  Milton's  art,  and  the  limits  of  our  space 
warn  us  that  we  must  be  careful  as  to  the  ques- 


264  JOHN   MILTON 

tions  we  open  up.  Quite  an  essay  might  be  writ- 
ten upon  Milton's  rhythmical  periods  whether  in 
"Paradise  Lost"  or  in  "  Lycidas."  So,  too, 
much  may^  be  said  about  his  use  of  rhyme  in 
his  youthful  poems  as  well  as  about  his  experi- 
ments with  stanzas  and  with  unstanzaic  rhyme- 
less  lyrics — points  that  have  been  already  dealt 
with  briefly  elsewhere.  But  here  only  a  few 
somewhat  desultory  remarks  will  be  possible. 
Readers  of  Milton's  blank  verse,  just  as 
readers  of  Chaucer's  couplets,  must  beware  of 
thinking  that  either  poet  counted  his  syllables 
or  used  a  metronome.  Milton's  normal  blank 
verse  line  consists,  it  is  true,  of  ten  syllables, 
accented  alternately  from  the  second  ;  but  he 
sometimes  admits  a  redundant  eleventh  syllable 
in  his  epics  and  frequently  does  it  in  "  Comus  " 
and  "  Samson  "  where  the  verse  naturally  takes 
on  the  freedom  allowed  it  in  the  drama.  He 
also  permits  himself  redundant  syllables  in  the 
body  of  a  verse,  because  his  ear  was  satisfied  if 
it  got  a  sufficient  number  of  stresses  in  a  line  — 
normally  five  —  to  make  it  fairly  uniform  with 
its  fellows  and  at  the  same  time  secure  the 
charm  of  play  and  variety.  The  verses  that 


WORKS  265 

make  modern  readers  halt  are  generally  those  in 
which  an  accent  has  been  shifted  since  Milton's 
day,  or  in  which  a  tendency  to  count  syllables 
rather  than  be  satisfied  with  an  approximate 
rhythm,  has  baffled  the  inexpert  reader. 
For  example,  the  verse  : 

L    f  ^  / 

"  And  sat  as  Princes  whom  the  supreme  King  " 

seems  prosaic  until  we  learn  that  Milton  in- 
tended "supreme  "  to  be  stressed  on  the  penult. 
The  verse  describing  Leviathan,  which  God 

Crf.Qr&f     >         tf/fJ*     ~f 

"  Created  hugest  that  swim  the  ocean  stream," 

confuses  us  until  we  learn  that  Milton  meant  us 
to  read  straight  along  just  as  if  we  were  reading 
prose,  in  which  case  we  should  pass  rapidly  over 
the  two  offending  syllables  in  the  third  foot. 

Finally,  for  in  this  matter  we  must  be  brief 
since  Professor  Masson  and  Mr.  Bridges  have 
dealt  with  it  at  length,  the  line  ^ 

"  That  invincible  Samson,  far  renowned," 

ought,  it  would  seem,  to  be  read  with  equal 
straightforwardness,  when  it  will  be  at  once 
perceived  that  although  only  four  stresses  are 
thus  obtained,  the  verse  will  fit  sufficiently  well 


266  JOHN   MILTON 

into  its  period.  We  shall  probably  not  attempt, 
if  we  are  wise,  to  stress  "that,"  and  we  shall  do 
well  to  remember  that  after  all  in  the  reading 
of  blank  verse,  as  well  as  of  prose,  not  a  little 
depends  upon  the  idiosyncrasies  of  the  reader. 
But  perhaps  the  most  important  point  to 
be  observed  about  Milton's  blank  verse  is  his 
management  of  the  caesura  or  pause  in  the 
individual  line.  It  is  in  this  particular  that 
he  best  earns  the  title  of  supreme  metrical 
artist  of  the  world.  Infinite  variety  and 
infinite  resulting  harmony  characterize  his 
manipulation  of  these  pauses,  which  may  fall 
almost  anywhere  within  the  limits  of  a  line. 
The  reader  should  train  himself  to  observe 
their  effects,  and  should  follow  his  common 
sense  in  finding  them.  If  he  read  intelli- 
gently he  will  be  almost  sure  to  pause  where 
Milton  wished  him  to,  and  if  he  have  an  ear 
capable  of  appreciating  harmony  he  will  often 
be  tempted  to  pause  longer  than  is  proper,  in 
order  that  he  may  admire  such  splendid 
rhythmical  effects  as  this  :  — 

"The  Ionian  Gods  —  of  Javan's  issue,held         - 
Gods  |,  yet  confessed  later  than  Heaven  and  Earth." 


WORKS 


267 


With  regard,  now,  to  the  lyrical  verse  in 
general,  it  must  be  owned  that,  although  in 
."  L' Allegro,"  "  II  Penseroso,"  parts  of  "  Comus," 
and  one  or  two  other  early  poems,  Milton  caught 
the  melody  and  the  swing  of  the  Elizabethan 
octosyllabics,  he  was  not  a  true  singer  of  songs, 
but  more  a  lyrist  of  the  elaborate  kind.  His 
work  is  rather  harmonious  than  melodious  ; 
it  is  constructed,  but  does  not  flow.  Great 
success  has,  of  course,  been  had  in  the  elabo- 
rate lyric,  —  which  for  Anglo-Saxons  culminates, 
perhaps,  in  "  Lycidas,"  "Alexander's  Feast," 
and  the  "  Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Immor- 
tality,"—  but  it  is  obviously  less  true  than 
the  simple  lyrics,  of  which  one  of  Shakspere's 
or  Burns's  songs  may  be  taken  as  typical,  to 
the  essential  function  of  lyric  poetry,  which 
is  the  singing  out  of  the  heart  of  the  poet. 
Milton  was  not  made  to  sing  out  his  heart ; 
hence,  while  he  can  give  us  the  beautiful 
"  Echo  Song "  in  "  Comus,"  his  highest  and 
most  characteristic  work  is  to  be  found  else- 
where. Yet  one  hesitates  in  pronouncing  this 
judgment,  for  where  in  English  literature  can 
a  more  exquisite  passage  of  lyrical  poetry  be 


268  JOHN   MILTON 

found,  one  combining  more  of  the  charm  of 
well-chosen  rhymes  and  melodiously  flowing 
verses,  than  at  the  close  of  "  Comus  "  ? 

Side  by  side  with  Milton's  inability  to  sing 
out  his  own  heart  must  be  set  his  compara- 
tive inability  to  body  forth,  in  dramatic  form, 
the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  others.  We  have 
already  referred  to  this  limitation  of  his  gen- 
ius in  connection  with  "Comus"  and  "Sam- 
son." Curiously  enough,  although  he  is  not 
a  simple  lyrist,  and  thus  is  not  able  to  sing  a 
perfect  song,  it  is  to  his  possession  of  certain 
of  the  characteristics  of  a  true  lyrist  that  his 
failure  as  a  dramatic  poet  is  due.  Milton  him- 
self, or  some  phase  of  his  character,  speaks 
through  all  his  personages,  but  when  one's 
personality  speaks,  one  is,  to  a  certain  extent, 
a  lyrist.  Hence  it  is  that  Milton  belongs  to 
that  class  of  quasi-dramatists  of  whom  Mr. 
Theodore  Watts-Dunton  treats,  in  his  admira- 
ble article  on  "Poetry"  in  the  "Encyclopaedia 
Britannica."  He  was  greater  than  the  simple 
lyrists  in  that  he  could  not  help  concerning 
himself  with  the  fortunes  of  others,  but  he  was 
still  enough  of  a  lyrist  always  to  be  mindful, 


WORKS  269 

consciously  or  unconsciously,  of  himself  when- 
ever he  attempted  dramatic  work.  In  other 
words,  he  could  not,  any  more  than  Dante, 
attain  the  objectiveness  of  Homer,  Shakspere, 
and  Chaucer  at  his  best.  But  at  times  he 
came  near  doing  this,  perhaps  most  conspicu- 
ously in  the  speeches  of  Satan  and  Christ  in 
"Paradise  Regained,"  and  there  is  always 
such  tremendous  power  in  his  conception  and 
representation  of  his  characters,  that  his  fail- 
ure on  the  score  of  objectivity  of  treatment 
is  almost  overlooked.  Indeed,  it  is  not  quite 
certain  whether  the  power  of  representing 
characters  objectively,  i.e.  dramatically,  is  per 
se  greater  than  the  power  of  representing  them 
epically,  with  an  infusion  of  lyrical  passion. 
The  main  test  in  such  cases  must  be  the  rarity 
of  the  power,  and,  on  the  whole,  the  thoroughly 
great  quasi-dramatists  are  not  more  numerous 
than  the  thoroughly  great  dramatists. 

Nor  is  it  absolutely  clear  that  the  universality 
of  range  and  power  that  we  commonly  attribute 
to  Homer  and  Shakspere  alone  is,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  art,  superior  to  stupendous 
power  realizing  itself  in  sublime  and  noble  crea- 


2/0  JOHN   MILTON 

tions.  After  all  the  universality  is  more  appar- 
ent than  real;  and  the  limitations  observable 
in  connection  with  supreme  power  of  the  Mil- 
tonic  order,  are  often  self-limitations.  In  other 
words,  it  is  as  true  to  say  that  Milton  would  not 
have  written  many  of  Shakspere's  scenes  as 
that  he  could  not  have  written  them.  In  the 
preceding  pages  deference  has  been  paid  to 
current  critical  opinion  by  placing  Milton  below 
the  universal  poets ;  but  sometimes  this  seems 
to  be  an  injustice  to  him,  since,  in  Landor's 
words,  it  is  doubtful  whether  God  "  ever  created 
one  altogether  so  great  as  Milton."  Be  this  as 
it  may,  we  should  remember  that  in  limiting  his 
universality,  reference  is  made  -chiefly  to  the 
range  of  his  work  from  the  point  of  view  of 
its  contents,  not  from  the  point  of  view  of  its 
style  or  form.  Neither  Homer  nor  Shak- 
spere  is  universal  from  the  latter  point  of 
view.  Homer  is  epic  and  dramatic  in  a  su- 
pereminent  way,  but  he  is.  not  thus  great  as  a 
lyrist.  Shakspere  is  supreme  as  a  dramatist 
and  lyrist,  but  his  narrative  poetry,  beautiful 
as  it  is,  does  not  place  him  among  the  truly 
great  writers  of  epic. 


WORKS  271 

Closely  connected  with  this  matter  of  Milton's- 
lack  of  universality  is  a  quality  of  his  work  that 
demands  special  mention  —  his  virility.  While 
it  is  a  slander  to  represent  Milton  as  incapable  of 
appreciating  woman,  it  is  quite  true  to  say  that 
she  plays  no  exalted  part  in  his  work  —  for  Eve 
before  her  fall  is  practically  extra-human  —  and 
that  the  poet  himself  is  above  all  characterized 
by  virility.  The  treatment  of  women  in  the 
youthful  poems  and  in  some  of  the  sonnets, 
prevents  us  from  saying  broadly  that  Milton 
could  not  successfully  introduce  the  sex  into 
his  poetry ;  but  it  is  obvious  that  one  of  the 
specially  charming  features  of  the  Shakspe- 
rian  and  Homeric  creations  is  wanting  to  his 
work.  Here,  again,  fortune  has  been  unkind 
to  Milton,  for  the  world,  ever  since  his  day, 
has  been  paying  more  and  more  honor  to 
women,  until  it  almost  looks  as  if  they  had 
ousted,  or  would  soon  oust,  man  from  his  posi- 
tion as  the  main  subject-matter  of  literature. 
As  a  result  women,  who  seem  to  be  the  chief 
readers  to-day,  do  not  as  a  rule  care  for  Milton 
—  sublimity  of  character  not  being  one  of  their 
virtues  any  more  than  it  is  of  the  continental 


2/2  JOHN   MILTON 

nations.  Hence  it  is  almost  idle  to  hope  that 
Milton  can  ever  become  truly  popular  until 
women  are  educated  up  to  the  conception  and 
realization  of  sublimity,  as  they  surely  will  be. 
Meanwhile  it  will  be  perhaps  not  impertinent 
to  ask  whether,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
art,  Milton's  superhuman  personages  may  not 
be  put  in  the  scales  with  Shakspere's  men  and 
women  and  balance  them.  The  one  set  of 
characters  is  as  unique  as  the  other,  and  it 
is  mainly  personal  preference  that  makes  it  so 
easy  for  the  average  reader  to  decide  between 
them. 

But  it  is  time  to  draw  this  chapter  and  this 
book  to  a  conclusion,  and  this  may  be  not  inap- 
propriately done  by  proposing  and  attempting 
to  answer  a  query  with  regard  to  the  two  su- 
preme poets  whom  it  is  England's  imperish- 
able glory  to  have  given  to  the  world.  The 
query  is  —  Can  an  unmistakably  Shaksperian 
passage  in  the  "  grand  style  "  be  set  beside  an 
equally  unmistakable  Miltonic  passage  in  the 
"grand  style"  and  the  distinguishing  notes  be 
concretely  and  adequately  registered  ?  If  they 
can  be,  the  reader  will  have  one  of  those  touch- 


WORKS  273 

stones  Matthew  Arnold  was  fond  of  using,  or 
rather  one  of  those  tuning-forks,  that  will  enable 
him  to  contrast  the  two  poets  when  at  the 
highest  reaches  of  their  art  and  to  determine 
when  each  falls  short  of  his  supreme  work. 
Such  a  practical  test  thoroughly  applied  will 
conduce  to  more  adequate  knowledge  and  more 
perfect  love  of  the  two  master-poets  than  the 
mere  perusal  of  any  number  of  critical  lucubra- 
tions. It  is,  of  course,  idle  to  hope  that  any 
such  unfailing  test  can  be  given  in  these  pages, 
but  one  can  perhaps  be  adumbrated. 

Let  us  take  two  Shaksperian  passages  and 
two  Miltonic  ones. 

The  Prologue  to  "  Troilus  and  Cressida " 
opens  thus  :  — 

"  In  Troy,  there  lies  the  scene.     From  isles  of  Greece 
The  princes  orgulous,  their  high  blood  chafed, 
Have  to  the  port  of  Athens  sent  their  ships, 
Fraught  with  the  ministers  arid  instruments 
Of  cruel  war." 

Othello's  last  speech  of  consequence  runs  in  the 
main  thus :  — 

"  I  pray  you,  in  your  letters, 
When  you  shall  these  unlucky  deeds  relate, 
T 


2/4  JOHN   MILTON 

Speak  of  me  as  I  am  ;  nothing  extenuate, 

Nor  set  down  aught  in  malice  :  then  must  you  speak 

Of  one  that  loved  not  wisely  but  too  well ; 

Of  one  not  easily  jealous,  but  being  wrought 

Perplex'd  in  the  extreme  ;  of  one  whose  hand, 

Like  the  base  Indian,  threw  a  pearl  away 

Richer  than  all  his  tribe  ;  of  one  whose  subdued  eyes, 

Albeit  unused  to  the  melting  mood, 

Drop  tears  as  fast  as  the  Arabian  trees 

Their  medicinal  gum.     Set  you  down  this  ; 

And  say  besides,  that  in  Aleppo  once, 

Where  a  malignant  and  a  turbanM  Turk 

Beat  a  Venetian  and  traduced  the  state, 

I  took  by  the  throat  the  circumcised  dog, 

And  smote  him,  thus.1' 

Against  these  unmistakably    Shaksperian    pas- 
sages let  us  set  these  from  "  Paradise  Lost." 

"  And  now  his  heart 

Distends  with  pride,  and,  hardening  in  his  strength, 
Glories  :  for  never,  since  created  Man, 
Met  such  embodied  force  as,  named  with  these, 
Could  merit  more  than  that  small  infantry 
Warred  on  by  cranes  —  though  all  the  giant  brood 
Of  Phlegra  with  the  heroic  race  were  joined 
That  fought  at  Thebes  and  Ilium,  on  each  side 
Mixed  with  auxiliar  gods ;  and  what  resounds 
In  fable  or  romance  of  Uther's  son, 


WORKS  2/S 

Begirt  with  British  and  Armoric  Knights ; 
And  all  who  since,  baptized  or  infidel, 
Jousted  in  Aspramont,  or  Montalban, 
Damasco,  or  Marocco,  or  Trebisond, 
Or  whom  Biserta  sent  from  Afric  shore 
Where  Charlemain  with  all  his  peerage  fell 
By  Fontarabbia." 

And  again  :  — 

"  Yet  not  the  more 

Cease  I  to  wander  where  the  Muses  haunt 
Clear  spring,  or  shady  grove,  or  sunny  hill, 
Smit  with  the  Jove  of  sacred  song ;  but  chief 
Thee,  Sion.  and  the  flowery  brooks  beneath, 
That  wash  thy  hallowed  feet,  and  warbling  flow, 
Nightly  I  visit :  nor  sometimes  forgej: 
Those  other  two  equalled  with  me  in  fate, 
So  were  I  equalled  with  them  in  renown, 
Blind  Thamyris  and  blind  Maeonides, 
And  Tiresias  and  Phineus,  prophets  old : 
Then  feed  on  thoughts  that  voluntary  move 
Harmonious  numbers  ;  as  the  wakeful  bird 
Sings  darkling,  and,  in  shadiest  covert  hid, 
Tunes  her  nocturnal  note.     Thus  with  the  year 
Seasons  return ;  but  not  to  me  returns 
Day,  or  the  sweet  approach  of  even  or  morn, 
Or  sight  of  vernal  bloom,  or  summer's  rose, 
Or  flocks,  or  herds,  or  human  face  divine ; 
But  cloud  instead  and  ever-during  dark 


276  JOHN   MILTON 

Surrounds  me,  from  the  cheerful  ways  of  men 
Cut  off,  and,  for  the  book  of  knowledge  fair, 
Presented  with  a  universal  blank 
Of  Nature's  works,  to  me  expunged  and  rased, 
And  wisdom  at  one  entrance  quite  shut  out." 

Now  what  is  one  to  say  of  these  contrasted 
passages,  or  rather,  what  is  one  not  to  say  of 
them  ?  How  perfectly  supreme  each  is,  and 
yet  how  different !  And  how  many  artistic 
qualities  may  be  pointed  out  in  each !  Is  it 
not  idle,  then,  to  attempt  to  differentiate  them  ? 
Probably  it  is  ;  yet  are  not  superb  and  glorious 
affluence,  and  gathered-up  human  strength, 
and  piercing  human  sympathy  the  distinguish- 
ing notes  of  these,  and  most  other  great  Shak- 
sperian  passages ;  while  sublime  nobility  and 
godlike  poise  of  reticent  power  are  the  dis- 
tinguishing notes  of  these  and  most  other 
great  Miltonic  passages  ?  Does  not  Shak- 
spere  always  address  us  in  the  infinitely  varied 
voice  of  the  ideal  and  perfect  man,  and  Milton 
in  "that  large  utterance  of  the  early  gods"? 
It  is  the  noontide  Renaissance  set  over  against 
an  age  that  never  existed,  an  age  characterized 
by  a  blending  of  the  best  characteristics  of 


WORKS  277 

the  Greek  and  the  Hebrew.  Shakspere  is  the 
full  blushing  rose  of  human  genius  in  its  total- 
ity ;  Milton  is  the  'stately,  pure,  noble  lily  of 
human  genius  on  its  spiritual  and  ideal  side. 
Let  us  give  our  best  love  to  the  one  or  the 
other ;  but  let  us  reverence  both  with  all  our 
hearts  and  souls. 


INDEX 


A. 

Addison,  Joseph,  57,  195. 
Agar  (Mrs.),  Anne  Milton,  19, 

120. 
Alexandrian  idyllists,  120,  130, 

i37»  139-Ho,  iSi-152- 
Andreini,  G.  B.,  his  "Adamo," 

212. 

Aristotle,  62,  77. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  57,  91,  207, 

261,  273;  his  "  Thyrsis,"  132, 

133,  138. 

Arthur,  King,  Milton's  pro- 
posed epic  on,  17,  78,  152, 
194. 

B. 

Bacon,  Lord,  117,  163. 

Bain,  Prof.  C.  W.,  74  note. 

Barlaeus,  213. 

Barnfield,  Richard,  62,  125. 

Baron,  Richard,  172. 

Baroni,  Leonora,  16. 

Barren,  Robert,  34. 

Beaumont,  Francis,  85. 

Beaumont,  Joseph,  129. 

"Beowulf,"  219-221. 

Bion,    130;    his  "Lament   for 

Adonis,"  137. 
Bossuet,  1 60. 
Bridges,  Robert,  265.  ' 


Bridgewater,  Earl  of,  97,  98, 
99,  101. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  163. 

Browne,  William  (of  Tavis- 
tock),  86,  106,  139;  his  "In- 
ner Temple  Masque,"  103, 
114;  his  "  Britannia's  Pasto- 
rals," 114  note. 

Browning,  Robert,  3,  14,  57; 
his  "Childe  Roland,"  231. 

Bryskett,  Ludovick,  his  pas- 
toral on  Sidney,  137,  142. 

Bucer,  Martin,  168. 

Bullen,  A.  H.,  85. 

Burke,  Edmund,  36,  57. 

Burns,  Robert,  267. 

Burton,  Robert,  his  "  Anatomy 
of  Melancholy,"  81-82,  84- 
85,  87,  88. 

Butler,  Samuel,  67. 

Byron,  Lord,  8,  13,  14,  57. 

C. 

Caedmon  (pseudo),  213. 
Castiglione,  B.,   his    "Alcon," 

*37- 

Chappell,  William,  8. 

Charles  I.,   12,  20,  21,  36,  37, 

38,  46,  123,  171-172. 
Chateaubriand,  164. 


279 


280 


INDEX 


Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  14,  68,  108, 

125,  223,  269. 
Christina,    Queen    of    Sweden, 

176. 

Cleveland,  John,  7,  127,  129. 
Cobbett,  William,  49. 
Coleridge,  Sara,  225. 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  236. 
Collins,  William,    57,   86;    his 

"  Passions,"  85. 
Corbet,  Bishop,  124. 
Cowley,  Abraham,  57;  his  elegy 

on  Crashaw,  149. 
Cowper,   William,    57,   77;   his 

translations  of  Milton's  Latin 

verses  quoted,  3  note,  4  note, 

64  note,  151  note,  153. 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  20,  24,  25,  43, 

52,  176,  188. 

D. 

Dante,  14,  52,  201,  202,  223, 
224-233  (compared  with 
Milton),  253,  255,  269;  his 
"Divine  Comedy,"  48,  108, 
195,  219. 

Darwin,  Charles,  208. 

Davis,  Miss,  30-31. 

De  Quincey,  Thomas,  164. 

Derby,  Countess  of,  96-98. 

De  Vere,  Aubrey,  225,  226,  228. 

Diodati,  Charles,  5,  6,  17,  18, 
64,  74,  76,  134,152-153,  187. 

Donne,  John,  66,  67. 

Dowden,  Prof.  Edward,  33. 

Dryden,  John,  8,  51,  57,  124, 
125,  195;  his  "Alexander's 
Feast,"  65,  267;  his  ode  on 
Mrs.  Killigrew,  121. 

Du  Moulin,  Peter,  41,  176. 


Dyer,  John,  57;   his"Grongar 
Hill,"  86. 


Egerton,  Lady  Alice,  99,  100, 

112. 

"  Eikon  Basilike,"  37-38. 
Ellwood,  Thomas,  48,  234,  25 1 . 

F. 

Fairfax,  Lord,  188. 
Fergusson,  Robert,  his  elegy  on 

John  Hogg,  124. 
FitzGerald,  Edward,  143  note. 
Fletcher,   Giles,   his   "Christ's 

Victory  and  Triumph,"  237. 
Fletcher,  John,  106,  in,  132; 

his  "  Faithful  Shepherdess," 

104,    113-114;     his    "Nice 

Valour,"  85. 
Fletcher,  Phineas,  68. 

G. 

Galileo,  15. 

Garnett,  Dr.  Richard,  6,  15,  21 

note,  27,  37,  72,  73,  88,  no, 

143,  181,  200,  213,  225,  226, 

229,  238,  239,  244,  245. 
Gauden,   Bishop,   his    "  Eikon 

Basilike,"  38. 
Gibbon,  Edward,  8,  164. 
Gill,  Dr.  Alexander,  6. 
Goethe,     14,     242,     246;     his 

"  Faust,"  223. 
Gosse,  Edmund,  155. 
Gray,  Thomas,  57,  86,  119;  his 

"  Elegy,"  n  8,  170. 
Grotius,     15;      his     "Adamus 

Exul,"  213. 
Green,  Matthew,  86. 


INDEX 


28l 


Guarini,     113;      his     "Pastor 

Fido,"  104,  143. 
Guest,  Dr.  Richard,  138,  142. 

H. 

Hall,  Bishop,  160. 

Hallam,  Henry,  63,  65,  73,  in, 
143,  190. 

Handel,  86. 

Hartlib,  Samuel,  158. 

Hobson  (the  carrier),  61,  124. 

Holstein,  Lucas,  16  note. 

Homer,  45,  91,  108,  201,  222, 
223,  227,  269,  270,  271;  his 
"  Iliad,"  202,  210,  218,  219, 
221;  his  "Odyssey,"  114. 

Hooker,  Richard,  163. 

Horace,  176,  191. 

Hughes,  John,  86. 

Hugo,  Victor,  223. 

Hume,  Patrick,  249. 

Huxley,  Prof.  T.  H.,  49. 

I. 

Italian  poets,  influence  of,  on 
Milton,  14,  94-95,  114,  142- 
I43»  245. 

J. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  65,  73, 
104,  105,  109,  130,  142,  143, 
197,  245. 

Jones,  Richard,  33. 

Jonson,  Ben,  6,  102,  106,  107, 
no,  113,  115-116,  123,  125, 
126;  his  memorial  verses 
on  Shakspere,  124;  his 
"  Pleasure  Reconciled  to 
Virtue,"  115-116. 


K. 

Keats,  John,  57. 
King,    Edward,   126-129,   J34» 

138,  148,  251. 
King,  Henry,  129. 
King,  Sir  John,  126. 

L. 

Lamb,   Charles,   his    "  On    an 

Infant,  etc.,"  121. 
Landor,  Walter  Savage,  14,  57, 

72,  143  note,  225,  227,  270. 
Laud,  Archbishop,    8,   10,   1 1, 

12,  21,  23. 

Lauder,  William,  211. 
Lawes,  Henry,  96,  97,  100,  101, 

102,  189,  251. 

Lawrence,  Henry,  43,  89,  189. 
Ley,  Lady  Margaret,  189. 
Lovelace,    Richard,   his    elegy 

on   the   Princess  Katherine, 

121. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  57,  155, 
163,  165  note. 

M. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  104,  164,  180, 

245- 

Maecenas,  77. 
Manso,  Marquis,  17,  74,  77,  78, 

152. 

Marini,  17,  67,  69,  186. 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  2,  86. 
Marot,    Clement,    his    pastoral 

on  Louise  of  Savoy,  137. 
Martin,  Sir  Theodore,  191. 
Marvell,  Andrew,  43. 
Masson,  Prof.  David,  7,  26,  52, 

77»  79»  80,94,  103  note,  115, 


282 


INDEX 


116,  127,  128,  171,  191,  211,  | 
212  note,  216,  237,  249,  258, 
265. 

Michelangelo,  55. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  3. 

Milton,  Christopher,  19,  35. 

Milton,  John,  Sr.,  2,  3,  18,  19, 
35,  74,  77,  80,  98. 

Milton,  John,  birth,  I ;  family, 
2-3  ;  early  schooling,  4-6  ; 
at  Cambridge,  6-9  ;  at  Hor- 
ton,  10-13  ;  travels  in  Italy, 
14-17;  teaches  school,  19; 
marriage,  25-33  ;  serves  as 
Latin  Secretary,  37-45;  loses 
his  sight,  39-40 ;  escapes 
at  the  Restoration,  46-47; 
writes  his  great  poems,  48- 
50;  death,  52. 

,  ,  his  Arianism,  10, 

181;  character  as  an  artist, 
6,  14,54-55,  250-252;  char- 
acter as  a  man,  55-56;  con- 
troversial methods,  177-179; 
his  idealism,  22,  53-54;  his 
imagination,  253-255;  his 
influence  on  English  litera- 
ture, 56-58;  his  love  of  art, 
16;  his  love  of  nature,  12- 
13,  70,  90-91;  his  metrical 
skill,  66-68,  81,  82-83,  94- 
95,  125,  140-143,  190-191, 
244-245,  262-268;  his  per- 
sonal purity,  8,  194;  his 
prose  style,  164-165;  his 
relations  with  women,  31- 
33,  271-272;  as  a  quasi- 
dramatist,  107-110,  268- 
269;  his  syntax,  258-263; 
his  vocabulary,  151,  162- 


163,  257-258;   use  of  proper 
names,  240,  255-256. 

, ,  chief  works  of, 

Anti- Episcopal   Tracts,    22- 

23,  159-161,  183  note. 
Arcades,   13,  59,  82,  83,  93, 

95,  96-99. 
Areopagitica,    31,    57,    156, 

158,  169,  170. 
At  a  Solemn  Music,  93-95. 
At  a  Vacation  Exercise,  62- 

63- 
Comus,    13,   59,   76,  82,   83, 

93,  95,  96-118,  141,  203, 
204,   238,  243,   245,  246, 
258,  264,  267,  268. 

De  Doctrina  Christiana,  35, 

51,  158,  180-181. 
Divorce    Pamphlets,    26-29, 

165-169. 
Eikonoklastes,    37-38,    170- 

172. 
Elegy  on  a  Fair  Infant,  6l, 

62,  68,  120-123. 
Epitaph  on  the  Marchioness 

of  Winchester,  61,  8 1,  83, 

125-126. 
Epitaphium  Damonis,  5,  18, 

59,   7i,    73,    74,    78,   H9, 

148,  149,  150-153,  251. 
First  Defence  (against   Sal- 

masius),  40,  170,  173. 
History  of  Britain,  35,   51, 

158,  179. 
//  Penseroso,   13,  59,   79-92, 

94,  267. 

L?  Allegro,  13,  59,  79-92,  94, 

258,  267. 
Latin  Verses,  3,  4,  9,  16,  17, 

18,33,70,71-78,  H8-I53. 


INDEX 


283 


Lycidas,  13,  59,  61,  83,  93, 
94, 117,  120,  126-148,  154, 
203,  204,  258,  264,  267. 

Nativity  Ode,  9,  61,  63-68, 

82,93- 

Of  Education,  19,  158,  170. 
<9«  Hobson,  61,  124. 
6>w    Shakspere,    9,    61,    81, 

123-124. 
0«  //&*  Passion,  64,   69-70, 

93- 

Paradise  Lost,  15,  21,  23, 
32,  33,  34,  38,  44,  48-49* 
56,  93,  108,  1 10,  118,  140, 
141,  154,  181,  183,  193- 
233,  234,  236-240,  246, 
251,  253,  254-255,  258, 
259,  261,  264,  274-276. 

Paradise  Regained,  48,  49- 
50,  234-241,  245,  246, 
247,  251,  256,  269. 

Samson  Agonistes,  33,  48, 
49-50,  234-236,  240-248, 
251,  264,  268. 

Second  Defence  (against  Mo- 
ms), 4  note,  13  note,  42, 
174-175,  1 88  note. 

Song  on  May  Morning,  9, 
61,  70,  80. 

Sonnets,  9,  20,  24,  43,  61, 
184-191,  251. 

Tenure  of  Kings  and  Mag- 
istrates, 36,  170-171. 
Milton,  Sarah  Jeffrey,  3,  18. 
Mimnermus,  91. 
Minshull,    Elizabeth    (Milton's 

third  wife),  31,  47. 
Minto,  Prof.  William,  136. 
Montrose,      Marquis     of,     his 

epitaph  on  Charles  I.,   123. 


More,  Henry,  7,  127,  129. 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  his  "Lam- 
entation, etc.,"  68. 

Morus,  Alexander,  41-42,  174- 
176,  213. 

Moschus,  130;  his  "Lament 
for  Bion,"  137,  139,  147, 

IS1- 

Moseley,  Humphrey,  33. 

N. 

Newman,  Cardinal  John  Henry, 

164. 
"  Nihelungenlied,"  219. 

O. 

Ochino,  Bernardino,  213. 

Ormond,  Earl  of,  173. 

Ovid,  73,  74  note;  his  "  Meta- 
morphoses," 114;  his  "  Elegy 
on  Tibullus,"  137. 

P. 

Pastoral  Poetry,  120,  130-133. 
Pattison,  Mark,  19,  44,  65,  143, 

151,  152,  156  note,  163,  186, 

205,  245-246. 
Peele,  George,  his  "  Old  Wives' 

Tale,"  112-113. 
Petrarch,  185,  187,  191. 
Phillips,  Mrs.  Anne.    See  Agar. 
Phillips,  Edward,  19,  26,  185. 
Phillips,  John,  19. 
Philostratus,   his    "  Imagines," 

115. 

Plato,  77,  81. 

Pope,  Alexander,  57,  86,  124. 
Powell,    Mary    (Milton's    first 

wife),  25-33,  34-35. 
Powell,  Richard,  25,  26. 


284 


INDEX 


Propertius,  146;    his  elegy  on 
Paetus,  133,  137,  147. 

Prynne,  Wm.,  his  "  Histriomas- 
tix,"  100. 

Puteanus,   his    "Comus,"    113, 
115,  116. 

Q. 

Quarles,  Francis,  69. 

R. 

Ranelagh,  Lady,  33. 
Raphael,  55,  199,  229. 
Rota,  Bernardino,  31,  190. 
Rons,  John,  73,  75. 
Ruskin,  John,  164. 


Saintsbury,  Prof.  George,  105, 
no. 

Salmasius,  38,  40,  41,  174-176. 

Salzilli,  G.,  76. 

Scherer,  E.,  207,  210. 

Schopenhauer,  207. 

Shakspere,  William,  I,  9,  n, 
12,  14,  45,  51,  52,  56,  81,98, 
113,  117,  123,  124,  146,  162, 
173  note,  176,  196,  222,  227, 
229,  242,  253,  257-258,  259, 
260,  263,  267,  269,  270,  271, 
272-277  (compared  with 
Milton)  ;  his  "  Hamlet,"  199, 
231;  his  "Lear,"  246;  his 
"Othello,"  108,  231,  273; 
his  Sonnets,  136,  189;  his 
"  Troilus  and  Cressida,"  273. 

Shelley,  P.  B.,  8,  14,  57;  his 
"Adonais,"  133,  138,  144, 
146. 

Simmons,  Samuel,  48,  49,  234. 

Skinner,  Cyriack,  43,  188,   189. 


Sophocles,  91. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  259. 

Spenser,  Edmund,  u,  60,  68, 
69,  86,  87,  96,  in,  113, 
114,  132,  223;  his  "Astro- 
phel,"  130,  137;  his  "Faerie 
Queene,"  116-117.  - 

Starkey,  John,  234. 

Strafford,  Earl  of,  21. 

Surrey,  Earl  of,  190. 

Swinburne,  A.  C,  25,  57,  126. 

Sylvester,  Joshua,  60,  69,  86. 

T. 
Tasso,  17,  77,  113,  219,  223; 

his  "  Aminta,"  104,  143. 
Taylor,  Bishop  Jeremy,  163. 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  59,  90,   143 

note,   253;    his  "In   Memo- 

riam,"  134. 
Theocritus,  130,  131,  139;   his 

First  Idyll,  137,  151. 
Thompson,  Mrs.  Catherine,  189. 
Thomson,  James,  57,  263. 
Tibullus,  137,  146. 
Tomkyns,    Rev.    Thomas,    48, 

234. 

U. 

Usher,  Archbishop,  160. 

V. 

Vane,  Sir  H.,  Jr.,  188. 

Verity,  A.  W.,  88,  116  note, 
143  note. 

Virgil,  34,  73,  74  note,  130, 
140,  145,  224,  227;  his 
"  /Eneid,"  219;  his  Eclogues, 

!37»  '39- 

Voltaire,  212;  his  "  Candide," 
207. 


INDEX 


28S 


Vondel,  J.,  212  note,  213-215 
(his  "  Lucifer  ") ;  his  "  Sam- 
son," 243. 


W. 

Warton,  Thomas,  73,  86,  98. 
Washington,  George,  24,  55. 
Watts-Dunton,  Theodore,  107, 
268. 


Woodcock,  Katherine  (Mil- 
ton's second  wife),  31,  190. 

Wordsworth,  William,  13,  57, 
91,  92,  236,262;  his  "Ode 
on  the  Intimations,  etc.,"  65, 
267;  his  Sonnets,  184. 

Wotton,  Sir  Henry,  101,  no. 

Y. 

Young,  Rev.  Thomas,  4,  74,  76. 


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